Yaakov Wechsler was born in 1912 in Chicago to Yerachmiel. When Yaakov was 17, the family visited Israel as tourists. Yaakov was taken by the yeshiva in Hebron and persuaded his parents to allow him to remain and study there. He lived with Rabbi Ephraim Sokolover and changed his former 'spoiled' way of life to one of poverty and Torah study.
On August 24, 1929 he was killed by the Arab rioters who broke into the house of Eliezer Slonim, where he and others were hiding. He was buried in a common grave with other martyrs of the massacre in the Hebron cemetery.
