Inside, the yeshiva students stand frantically against the doors, br

attempting to hold back the murderers. But suddenly there is a br

loud crash. A huge hole has been made in the front door! Shots br

ring out. Avraham Yanai, fifty-six, a poor Jew from Con- br

stantinople, falls, struck in the arm. A second shot catches br

twenty-seven-year-old Zalman Vilenski, secretary of Yeshiva br

Knesset Yisroel, in the face. He collapses in a pool of blood. Yet br

another bullet rips the stomach of Yisrael Mordechai Kaplan, a br

twenty-two-year-old yeshiva student from Vilkomir in br

Lithuania. Even as he falls, he continues to hold onto the door br

to try to keep the Arabs out. But only for a moment; he collapses br

and dies.

The yeshiva students show superhuman strength and br

bravery as they hold back the hordes. But under the assault of br

bullets they are forced to retreat with the rest into the inner br

rooms. The door to the roof bursts open and Arabs leap into the br

house. Two more yeshiva students now fall, twenty-six-year-old br

Dov Ber Lipin of Vitebsk and Alter Haim Shor, twenty-four, of br

Rozalia, Lithuania. Their bodies tumble out onto the steps, and br

the mob tramples them as it rushes inside. Eliezer Don Slonim, br

cool and strong to the end, fires his pistol at the mob, but a br

heavy metal pipe strikes him viciously in the head; he collapses.

Now there is no hope left, but the yeshiva students fight like br

lions. The sound of swords and knives slashing and cutting is br

mixed with the cries of women and children. Someone cries, br

“Shma Yisrael . . .!” Yisrael Lazarovski, a student from Letsch, br

Russia, is brutally stabbed and dies. He is only seventeen. br

Yisrael Hillel Kaplinski is older; he is twenty-one. Lying on the br

ground, felled by a bullet wound, he is attacked by a dozen Ar- br

abs who stab him repeatedly. A survivor recalls him shouting, “I br

am already dead and they still hit me!” And in a corner, in a br

pool of blood, wrapped in his prayer shawl, lies the Rabbi of br

Zichron Ya’akov, Rabbi Avraham Yaakov Orlinski, next to his br

dead wife, who had come to Hebron to spend a quiet Sabbath br

with their daughter and son-in-law, Eliezer Don Slonim.

Rabbi Tzvi Drobkin, sixty-seven, from Bobruysk, Russia, is br

known as “the Iluy [“genius”] of Shklov.” The Arabs literally br

rip his belly in two and his insides pour out. He arrived just half br

a year earlier from bloody Russia, hoping to live a life of Torah br

and peace in the Holy Land.