Szposnik, Shneur

Son of Bella and Joseph. He was born in 1896 in Buderkov, Ukraine, and when he was five, in 1901, he immigrated with his family to Eretz Israel. The family settled in Petach Tikva and Shneur studied at the Netzach Yisrael school in the village. He worked from his youth and to help support the family worked in his parents’ bakery and later as an agricultural laborer in Pardesi Petach Tikva. In one of his letters to his brother Yehoshua, Shneur wrote: “We shall bring the end of our small deeds to our great spirit, for we are the sons of Bar Kokhba and Rabbi Akiva.” At the outbreak of the 1920 riots and the deterioration of the situation in the moshavot of the Upper Galilee, Shneur was one of the first to immigrate to the Upper Galilee and came to the aid of Tel Hai, and worked in the Tel Hai group and participated in the Haganah. On 20 Kislev, 12.12.1919, he was shot by rogue tribes and the attackers returned fire and defeated the attackers. Shneur, who did not manage to return to the Tel Hai yard from his work in the field, was shot down and killed. He was the first Jewish soldier fallen in the defense of Tel Hai. He was laid to rest in the Tel Hai cemetery. He left parents and brother. The town of Kiryat Shmona is named after him and seven comrades who fell in the defense of Tel Hai. On a marble slab at the foot of the roaring lion statue are engraved his name and the names of his friends. His brother called his house in Ora, named after Shneur. A list in his memory was published in “Yalkut Tel Hai” and the circumstances of his fall were recorded in “Hashomer Book”, “Haganah Book” and “One Hundred Years in Israel.”