Yechezkel Shraga Hiller

Yechezkel Shraga Hiller was born in Tarnów, Poland, in 1910. He was the eldest son of Reuven Hiller and Necha (Netti) née Hollander (from Piwniczna).

Since his youth Yechezkel was a member of the Betar movement, and aspired to make Aliyah (immigration) to the Land of Israel. He was appointed leader of the Tarnów Betar branch and never missed any of the Betar meetings held throughout Poland. He was also an avid reader of writings by Zhabotinsky and the poet Uri Zvi Grinberg published in the newspapers of the era. In 1938 Zhabotinsky visited the city of Kraków and Yechezkel, having attended his speech, came back home very enthusiastic. Yechezkel also used to read plenty of books about Zionism, which he would borrow from the Hebrew library in Tarnów. He also enjoyed building ship models, and planned to study naval engineering.

In 1929 Yechezkel went through agricultural training ("Hachshara") in the town of Oświęcim, in preparation to Aliyah. In 1931 he was conscripted to the Polish army and served for 18 months, during which he was granted leave for the Jewish holidays.

In 1933, having completed his military service, he began working as a milliner. In 1936 he opened a deli which became a success. In the evenings his shop hosted meetings of Betar members, where news from the Land of Israel and of Betar's activities, both there and in Poland, were relayed. His parents and brothers also shared this enthusiasm, and dreamt of reaching the Land of Israel. Yechezkel played an active role in sending Betar members on their way to the Land of Israel. It should be noted that Betar members were usually passed over when it came to allotting British immigration certificates; for this reason they turned to illegal immigration (Ha'apalah), arriving in small, ramshackle vessels. Many Betar members who made it to the Land of Israel before WW2 later said that had it not been for Yechezkel, they would have probably not survived.

In 1939 Yechezkel got engaged to Henia, née Rubin, from the town of Mielec.

On the 4th of September, 1939, when Yechezkel, his family and their neighbours took shelter in their building's basement, the thunders of German artillery were getting nearer. The parents begged their four eldest children to flee, leaving them behind with the two younger ones.

The four brothers set out on a march of several hundred kilometers, finally reaching the city of Lwów. Yechezkel arranged for his fiancée, Henia, to reach the city as well and they got married at the Lwów rabbinate. Shortly afterwards, they were deported from Lwów eastwards, to Siberia, where they worked in logging wood, stacked on the frozen river. From there they moved on to Uzbekistan, and two months were sent to Kazakhstan. While there, Yechezkel was brought down with typhus, and when he got better was suddenly drafted into a military working detail. At that time two Polish army divisions were set up in Moscow, to be amalgamated into the Red Army in combat against the Germans. Yechezkel managed to enlist with the second division, was sent to training in Moscow, received a commission, and was posted as an officer to the front. In letters sent to his brothers he wrote that it was everyone's duty to join up, fight the Germans and avenge the Jewish people, whose terrible fate under German occupation had already become known in Russia. Yechezkel was wounded twice. The second time was when the Red Army had already retaken parts of Poland. Yechezkel wrote home that he was hospitalized in a field hospital set up in the premises of the famous Yeshiva in the city of Lublin. He also wrote that in the liberated towns and shtetls no Jews had survived, and called again upon his siblings to join the fighting. By the 9th of May, 1945, Germany's surrender was completed. A short while later, his wife Henia received a message from the Polish army, stating that Yechezkel had been killed in action near the river Oder in the eastern part of Germany on the 12th of April, 1945, slightly over three weeks before the war ended. Sadly, he didn’t live to see Germany's defeat.