Trumpeldor, Joseph

(1880–1920)

   Yishuv hero. Trumpeldor was the first Jew to receive a commission in the czarist army. This was a reward for his heroism in the defence of Port Arthur against the Japanese in 1904, in the course of which he lost his left arm and was captured and imprisoned in Japan. In the prison camp he produced a Zionist news-sheet in Russian for his Jewish fellow- prisoners.

   Trumpeldor emigrated to Palestine in 1912. He worked with JABOTINSKY in the efforts to form a Jewish Legion to fight on the side of the British in World War I and later served as second-in-command of the Zion Mule Corps at Gallipoli. After the February 1917 revolution he returned to Russia and tried to persuade the Provisional Government to form Jewish regiments that would serve in the Russian army and eventually break through to Palestine. After setting up the Hechalutz organization in Russia, Trumpeldor returned to Palestine in 1919. In early 1920 Jewish settlements in the north-east corner of the country (then under French rule) were threatened by attacks from Arab anti-French rebels. The Zionist leadership, including Jabotinsky, urged the Jewish population to withdraw for a while until order was re-established. But a few settlers, led by Trumpeldor, refused and concentrated at the colony of Tel Hai, near the present- day Kfar Giladi. The result was a massacre in which Trumpeldor was one of the first to fall. His defiance and heroic death in action became a symbol of resistance for the yishuv. The Labour Legion formed by arrivals from the Crimea shortly after his death was called by his name, and the Brit Trumpeldor (the Betar), a right-wing nationalist youth movement, was founded in his memory. It still exists as the youth branch of the Herut Party. The grave of Trumpeldor and his five companions is surmounted by the large monument of a lion with its head flung defiantly up-wards. A settlement on the slopes of Mount Gilboa is named in his memory.