The son of Yehezkiel and Zivia, Shlomo Bornstein was born in Poland on 6th October 1928. At the age of seven his family moved to London, where his father received a position as a rabbi. After completing elementary and high schools, he studied for two years at a yeshiva near London, and then at university for one year. He excelled in languages, concentrating on English, French, and Hebrew. He gained a reputation as a sportsman, and he was also a sports trainer.
When the War of Independence broke out, he left everything behind and arrived in Israel via France in August 1948. He notified no one of his departure, not even his parents, as he was certain they would have opposed his decision; he was their only son. In letters he wrote to his aunt when he arrived in Eretz Yisrael, he expressed his happiness, and that he was determined to make it his home.
He was mobilized into the 72nd Infantry Battalion, 7th Brigade, “B” Company (the Anglo-Saxon Brigade), and his first request to his leaders was to be sent to the front immediately. “I came here to fight in the War of Independence,” he said, adding, “if I do not earn the right to live in a liberated Israel, perhaps my father and young sister will earn such a right, as it is for them and for the country that I live.”
Three weeks after his arrival, on 7th September 1948, Shlomo Bornstein was killed in action in the clash on the Kabul Mountain on the Birwa Front, not far from Akko.
He was buried in the military section of the Nahariya cemetery, together with two other volunteers from Belgium and Canada who had fallen in the same action.
Source: Translated from the Yizkor website by Joe Woolf.