Streifler, Shmuel

Son of Rachel and Gershon. He was born on 12.4.1892 in Kolomyja, Galicia, where he received primary and secondary education. Then he went to Vienna and worked in a bookstore. He was influenced by Ussishkin’s contrition, “Our Plan,” which encouraged him to immigrate to Eretz Israel and join the Hashomer association. In 1911 he immigrated to Israel, worked as an agricultural laborer in Petach Tikva, Ben Shemen and Rehovot, and was accepted as a “guard” but not as a member, but only for the vineyard season. In 1914 he married a wife who died two years later. He was one of the founders of Ein Ganim, near Petach Tikva, and an active member of the Achva group, the first group in Israel to receive agricultural projects. During the First World War he could walk freely in the streets of Petach Tikva, since the call to enlist in the Turkish army did not apply to him. As an Austrian citizen, he was a “detective” driver and informed his friends when there was a danger of searching for army evaders and forced labor. In those days friends would go out to work at night. In addition, Shmuel regularly volunteered for imprisonment instead of his friends when he appeared as a Turkish citizen. And even if it ended with beatings and torture, he would accept it with good spirit and pride. Shmuel and ten of his friends, being Austrian nationals, surrendered to the Turkish authorities, who were looking for spies and guards. They were severely tortured in the Turkish cell, and three of them – Shmuel Streifler, Menachem Groilich and Izik Mehring – found their deaths. On 28 Kislev, 13 December 1917, Shmuel died in the Turkish prison of torture and typhus and dysentery. His burial place is unknown to this day. The kibbutz named “Givat Hashlosha” was named after the three fallen soldiers. Shmuel was immortalized in the books “Zionim Alei Derech” and “The Second Aliyah”. And the Encyclopedia of Pioneers and Builders. The sculptor Batya Lishansky designed the statue of the three that was erected in Kibbutz Einat in memory of Shmuel and his friends.