Joseph Trumpeldor
Joseph Trumpeldor was born in Pyatigorsk, North Caucasus, Russia, 21.11.1880. His father, Ze’ev, was from a family of Polish origin. Ze’ev was forcibly taken into the Russian army while a tender boy, given over to education in gentile homes, served for 25 years and excelled in the Crimean War in the defense of Sevastopol. Ze’ev withstood all the pressure and temptations to convert to Christianity. After his release from the Russian army, he was the chief pharmacist at the Jewish hospital in Rostov-on-Don. He was a devoted Jew all his life, until he died in Pyatigorsk - about 85 years old in 1915. His mother, Fidosia bat Moshe Akselbandant was born in the Caucasus and was inclined to assimilation, like her family, in which quite a few converted to Christianity.
At 7 years old, he studied for six months in a ḥeder and forced his mother—for the first time in her life—to prepare a kosher Passover and a seder in accordance with Jewish customs. His father provided him with books to read about the heroism and glory of Israel in ancient times, in order to strengthen his Jewish identity. He excelled and graduated from the municipal school and successfully passed the entrance exam to a Real school — but was not accepted due to the quota of the school, which was allocated—in accordance with the Numerus clausus law—for Jewish students, had already been filled. His mother demanded that he remove the “Jewish obstacle” from his path of progress in life and convert to Christianity, but little “Osya” (as he was called in the family in Russian) flatly refused. He traveled from Rostov to his brother Herman, who was a dentist in Pyatigorsk, the city of his mother’s family, studied the profession and began working in it. He read a lot of literature, and was particularly influenced by the writings of Leo Tolstoy and tried to live according to his teachings. He diligently studied in high school privately, developed and trained his body with difficult exercises, and when the rumor about Herzl and Zionism reached him, he began to take an interest in it and in the history of Israel, and among the few Jews with the right to reside in Pyatigorsk he found some who would join him in a Zionist circle, and he became their resident and guide.
At the age of 20 he was examined at Kharkov University and qualified as a dentist. At the age of 22 he was drafted into the army and sent to serve in Tulchyn in Podolia. He made a good impression with his appearance, character and behavior, fulfilled all his duties faithfully and promptly and refused to use his right as an educated person to get rid of the menial jobs in the barracks and to obtain various advantages, and here too he organized a Zionist association of Jewish soldiers and was elected its chairman.
At the end of 1903, when the Russo-Japanese War was on the horizon, and the Jewish soldiers were divided into those inclined to evade sacrifice for the surrogate homeland who alienated the Jews, and those who were loyal patriots who were willing to give their lives to Russia so that it would later recognize its obligation to grant citizenship rights to the Jews as well. Trumpeldor was counted among the patriots and was even included in the list of soldiers designated to be transferred to new battalions that would be sent to the Far East. He was later removed from the list, and when the general, the division commander, came to review the battalion, Trumpeldor approached him with a request to be sent to the Siberian front. The battalion commander apologized for having decided to send “this brave soldier” to sergeant school, and when Joseph answered the general’s question—that he preferred service in the war to promotion—he was granted his request.
On the Far Eastern front in general and in the battles near Port Arthur in particular, he distinguished himself with acts of courage and heroism, honesty and loyalty, a friendly attitude towards other soldiers, and a firm and polite stance with noble humility towards his commanders. More than once he bit his lips until they bled at the painful “compliments” he received from commanders when he protested against their contemptuous remarks about Jews, that they were “not directed at him”, since he “did not look at all like a Jew.” He was awarded the “Cross of Saint George” in all four degrees and for personal honor from both great and small. In one of the battles, shrapnel from a cannon shell shattered his left hand and it had to be amputated above the elbow, and when his friend David Bilzerkowski came to visit him in the hospital and sought words to console him for the loss of his hand, he reassured his comforter: “It’s nothing! You'll see how we work in Eretz Israel” — and even wrestled with him with his right hand to show him that even with one hand he still had strength.
After a hundred days of treatment in the hospital, he recovered completely and was released from the army and allowed to go home. But his heart would not let him leave his comrades, in whose ranks he fought, and he asked to be given a sword and a pistol and to return him to the ranks of the fighters. His request was granted and he was promoted to the rank of Sergeant. His praise was published in a special daily order and he was given a military honor that only victorious leader are granted. He also excelled as a platoon commander and as an educator of his soldiers in moral behavior at a level that was rare in the Tsarist Russian army and added new heights to the string of his heroic deeds.
I have one hand left, but it is my right hand, and therefore I wish to share the life of my comrades as before. I ask His Excellency to grant me a sword and a pistol.
— Trumpeldor, request to his commanders.
But Trumpeldor's heroism was not enough to save the Russian army. With the surrender of the entire garrison of Port Arthur, he was also taken to a War Prisoners camp in Japan. In the camp, he organized the five hundred prisoners, established a mutual aid fund, and purchased tools and materials for their craftsmen. He founded a library and a school for the Jewish prisoners and another for the Russian prisoners, and during the year of captivity many received elementary education for the first time, and even learned reading and writing in Russian (due to the lack of textbooks, he composed a Russian grammar book for them himself). He gave lectures on science and literature, organized a troupe that performed The Sale of Joseph in Yiddish, and for the gentile members he published a booklet with the text in a Russian translation, so that they too could enjoy the performance. He founded a Zionist association with 125 members, and received money and other papers for Zionist work from the Zionist Organization in America. He published a Zionist newspaper in Russian in the camp, and the members of the Zionist association registered it in the Golden Book of the Jewish National Fund. He preached his Zionist-socialist idea: to establish cooperative settlement points in the land on the basis of self-labor and self-defense of Jewish settlements in the land, and chose 11 members who, after the liberation from captivity, would immigrate to Israel with him to realize the idea. He wrote to Menaḥem Ussishkin a letter proposing the establishment of a Jewish defense force in the country. Ussishkin flatly rejected his proposal and replied that “there has never been self-defense in the country, there is none now and there will never be in the future.”
When he was returned from captivity to his battalion in Harbin, he was received with great honor for his heroism and his dedication to the other captives. The battalion commander offered the general to promote him to the rank of Chief Sergeant officer, but the general did not dare to give such a high rank to a Jew on his own initiative, and only after Trumpeldor was presented in St. Petersburg to the royal court (according to one source, the queen presented him with a medal of merit and an artificial hand), was he given the rank of lieutenant and after passing the matriculation examination in 1907, was he appointed lieutenant in the reserve corps.
After visiting his family, he returned to Petersburg to study science before making aliyah to Israel. He prepared himself for his studies and passed the matriculation exam successfully and graduated from the law department of the university. During his preparations for the exam, a Russian princess visited him and offered him help for a high military career, on “a minor” condition — that he convert his religion. He thanked her graciously for her good will and her promise to help him whenever he turned to her, but he never turned to her again. He no longer had any desire for military service. But he was ready to fight for the Jewish homeland both as an officer and as a private.
During his studies at the university, he lived a communal life with six other friends in an apartment rented to all in partnership. He participated in the social life of the Jewish students, studied Hebrew and the history of Israel, and preached among the students to establish an agricultural commune in Israel in order to establish a new society based on morality and justice, without the exploitation of others. The students were not particularly attracted to the “exotic” idea of realizing a non-Marxist socialism, and especially in such a “remote corder of Asia.” The first person who agreed with his views, Yehuda Pilevich (who later became his colleague in HaḤalutz), Joseph found not among the students, but in the prison for political prisoners in the Petropavlovsk Fortress in St. Petersburg, where Josef was briefly imprisoned when he was arrested for participating in an illegal student rally after Tolstoy’s death. He found another friend through the mail. This was Zvi Schatz, a student at the Real School in Rumyantsi, Ukraine (later a worker and writer in Eretz Israel; killed along with Y. H. Brenner and his friends in the May 1921 riots in Jaffa), who conceived and proposed similar ideas which caught the attention of Joseph. From then on they discussed and developed the idea through an exchange of letters. In early 1910, Schatz immigrated to Eretz Israel to work and investigate the conditions for realizing the idea, and after a year he returned to Russia to prepare a group for its realization. In the meantime, Josef went out during his months off from school to train himself for agricultural work. In August 1911 he traveled to Rumyantsev and together with Schatz he held a conference of seven participants, where he first met with Schatz and worked out the action plan and its ideological foundation. He later returned to St. Petersburg to complete his studies. The third-class diploma he received did not satisfy him, and in the meantime he was even expelled from university for a while on charges of engaging in “politics.” He completed, through private study, the lessons he had missed, and in the fall of 1911 he was examined in them but failed the Church law course. In the spring of 1912 he was tested again, and this time he received his diploma as he wished. From then on, he was free to devote himself to the central idea of his life and to work toward realizing it in the Land of Israel.
In the fall of 1912, he immigrated to Israel with a group of 10 friends (5 male, 5 female) and began working in the Migdal community near Tiberias. Their attempts to establish the commune did not go well, and after a while, Joseph moved to work in Degania, and in his work, with one hand, he succeeded as one of the best and strongest workers. He was liked by all who met him, and the aura of heroism that surrounded him, his gentle and cordial attitude to everyone, and his vision of the purity of the future society became valuable spiritual assets in the community of pioneers and workers.
In 1913, he traveled to Vienna, to the 11th Zionist Congress, and tried—but in vain—to obtain the promise of the Zionist leaders that Migdal will have ‘Avodah ‘Ivrit exclusively. From there, he traveled to Russia to see the members of his group and make new friends. There, he found great change in his mother: she “repented,” became Jewish in heart and soul, and longed to immigrate to Israel and work in the household that her “Osia” (Trumpeldor) will establish. (She died in Pyatigorsk in 1920). After a short time he returned to Israel and to his work in Degania.
When World War I broke out, all the workers in the group received Turkish citizenship, so as not to be expelled from the country. But Joseph did not see the future of the country in a Turkish victory, and as a Russian reserve officer, his sense of military honor did not allow him to discard his status as an unwanted tool, and when the government decree was announced for Russian subjects to naturalize or leave, he put on the uniform of a Russian officer, stood before the Turkish governor in Tiberias and was sent out of the country with the honors due to an officer.
He left with those who left for Alexandria, Egypt. There he met with Ze'ev Jabotinsky and together they planned and worked to create a Hebrew battalion that would participate in the war for Eretz Israel within the framework of the British army, and thus he would be able to fulfill his duty both to his Russian homeland, by fighting its allied army, and to his true homeland, Eretz Israel, by fighting for its liberation from the Turkish rule that opposed the idea and enterprise of Zionism. When the British command in Egypt refused to accept a Jewish battalion of armed fighters into the army and agreed only to a battalion of auxiliary service in transport, a “Zion Mule Corps,” Jabotinsky withdrew from volunteering and decided to repeat his offer after some time, when the British would also agree to a combat battalion. But Trompeldor, as a seasoned military man, knew that on the front lines logistical support was just as important as combat service, and that, for starters, it was wise to accept the terms offered by General Maxwell on behalf of the command.
The battalion was founded and filled with volunteers from the exiles of Palestine, and Trumpeldor was appointed captain and acting deputy to the commander, Lt. Colonel Paterson. He went with the battalion to the Gallipoli front, doing great things both in educating the volunteers in military discipline and order and in protecting them and their honor towards the English officers and in actions for their families. One time he resigned because an English officer insulted him, and at the request of his soldiers, he accepted reconciliation from the commander and stayed. While serving in difficulties and dangers, he even wrote poetic notes in his diary about the beauties of the landscape. He showed contempt for danger and moved through the service routes even on the front lines, and on one occasion he was even wounded in the shoulder. Only at the urging of the senior officers did he agree to leave his men and go to the hospital for a short time. He traveled one time to Alexandria and recruited additional volunteers. He was respected by all the members of the command for his personal and military qualities that were beyond praise, but the existence of the battalion was a thorn in the side of those officers who opposed the Jews’ aspirations regarding the Land of Israel, and they plotted to drive a wedge between him and the men of his battalion and even to undermine the status of the battalion, and he held his ground against the scheming and conspiracies. But finally the order came to return the battalion to Egypt and disband it. In Egypt he made further efforts to save the existence of the battalion and to obtain other uses for it in the war, and when he failed, he went to London and participated with Jabotinsky in advocacy and efforts to create a new Jewish battalion to serve in arms on the Palestine front. But at that time the moment was not yet ripe — neither on the part of the British War Office nor among the Russian-Jewish subjects living in England. Jabotinsky remained in London and continued his stubborn efforts until success. He saw opportunities to gather and inspire a great force among the Jews of Russia, who had been freed from oppression and restrictions following the February Revolution of 1917. He traveled to Russia via the North Sea, where Allied ships were exposed to danger from German warships and submarines.