Strelzen, Moshe

Born in 1892 in the village of Arnfergovka, Kremenchug, Russia. After three years of elementary school, he was sent to the Mir Yeshiva, where he became interested in literature for various languages: Russian, German, French and Yiddish. He left the yeshiva, moved to Kremenchug, where he joined a Jewish group for self-defense, and took part in active defense against the rioters in the 1905 riots, after which the family emigrated to the United States and settled in Milwaukee. His undergraduate studies at the University of Wisconsin, where he specialized in agronomy and then made aliyah to Israel. During the First World War he completed his MA in agriculture and organic chemistry and then volunteered for the Hebrew Legion, the 39th King’s Regiment, and arrived in Israel in 1918. After completing his army service he remained in Israel and served as a teacher in schools In Jerusalem and in Tel Aviv, served as a member of the Central Committee of the Veterans’ Union and worked for the settlement of discharged soldiers on government land, and in the 1920s he served as a commander in the Haganah and excelled in his role. On the 23rd of Nisan (May 1, 1921), he fell in defense of Tel Aviv when he tried to save a Jewish family in the Neveh Shalom neighborhood, and was brought to eternal rest in the old cemetery in Tel Aviv.