Tsankar, Yaakov (Julek)

Son of Hannah and Shlomo. He was born in 1912 in Galicia. He immigrated to Eretz Israel in 1939, shortly before the outbreak of World War II, and joined the “Ha-Mifalil” kibbutz. Yaakov worked in the citrus orchards of Hadera and also worked in companies sent by the “Ha-Shomer Ha-Tsa’ir” kibbutz to work in various places in the country. In September 1940 he enlisted in the British Army and was assigned to the 462th Transport Company. He served in North Africa and Egypt. In April 1943, he was with his unit among the passengers of the ship “Aryanpura”, which left Alexandria, Egypt, at the head of a large convoy of Allied fleet ships en route to Sicily to participate in an invasion of Europe. On 27 Nisan, May 1, 1943, the ship was bombed by German planes and within a few minutes it drowned and 140 of the unit’s soldiers, Yaakov among them, descended to the depths. The newspaper Hashomer Hatzair published a list of his actions and his name was immortalized in the book of volunteerism in the Yizkor book of the Jabotinsky Institute and in the “Book of the Year of the Journalists” 1956. His memory was also memorialized in a ship-like memorial erected in the military cemetery on Mt. Herzl in Jerusalem, and on the bottom of the pool next to which are the names of all the company’s fallen. A gravestone was erected in the cemetery of the “HaMa’apil” kibbutz.