HERSHEL/ZVI

My Uncle Hershel had a short life.  Not as truncated as his younger sister, Rivka, who died at age 6, but short.  He only lived to age 22, dying as a result of an accident in Palestine.  My brother Harvey is named after him.  I know nothing about him as a person.  I have some pictures in which he appears as a handsome young man.  Hershel was born in 1913 in Telechan and lived in Palestine no more than 1 1/2 years before his death.  The following article from the Telechan Memorial Book (p.182) was written by his Uncle Shmuel Chaim, with whom he lived.

BIOGRAPHY OF ZVI EISENBERG, THE SON OF ISRAEL (AZRIEL)
                                                      OBM

He came to Israel in 1934 and went to live with Shmuel Chaim Eisenberg.  It was some time before he found a job.  He worked in the foundry and was injured by a piece of metal hitting his eye.  He was in the hospital in Haifa until he recovered.  He returned home and did not work for a few weeks, until he found work as a carpenter.  Even in carpentry he wasn’t lucky.  He was working on a machine and injured his arm.  He lived for several months with an injured arm.  Obviously from the date he came to Israel he had no luck.  This is it in a nutshell.  His hand recovered and he returned to work in the same carpentry shop and they sent him to build a roof for a building that was outside the settlement.  That morning he was confused and told Liba that he did not want to go to work.  Liba told him to go and that she would send him his lunch with Chia (her daughter) who was then 10 years old.  Chai brought him lunch.  There was no place to hide from the sun.  On the building there was a covering under the door.  Chia sat under the covering.  Hershel came down from the roof to eat.  He climbed on the covering and it overturned.  It split his head and he died.  Chia who was sitting below was choked by the roof and stretched out her hand, which was completely crushed.  At the time there were no good doctors and they had to amputate her hand[1].  To this day she suffers from the hand and one foot that did not properly heal.

Another version of the accident in the Telechan Memorial Book (p. 15):

“Hershel, the son of Azriel and Minka, was working on a building.  A scaffold collapsed and he was killed in the fall. His young niece, Chayele (Chia), eight years old, who was bringing him lunch at the time, was injured in the fall of the scaffold and remained a cripple for the rest of her life."

Hershel’s body prior to burial

 

Hershel died on a Thursday, August 8, 1935.  The epitaph on his gravestone reads:

ZVI  EISENBERG
Son of Azriel and Minka
who perished in an accident
on the ninth of Av, 5695,
 in the twenty-second year of his life
May His Soul Be Bound Up In The Bonds Of Everlasting Life


[1] Chia’s arm was amputated above the elbow.

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