Sgt. Maj. Alik Pozdnykov, 38: Cop was ‘proud to serve his country’
Killed on October 7 battling the Hamas attack on the Supernova music festival
Sgt. Maj. Alik Pozdnykov, 38, a detective in the Israel Police’s Magen unit, from Dimona, was killed on October 7 battling the Hamas attack on the Supernova music festival.
That morning, Alik was on duty as one of the hired police officers working at the festival, where he arrived Friday night.
His wife called him with the start of the rocket fire, and he told her “it looks like a war is starting.” At 7:48 a.m. he sent her a selfie and wrote: “I love you guys.”
At 8:06 a.m., Alik sent a friend a message saying that he was trying to battle the Hamas gunmen but he had only one bullet left. That was the last anybody heard from him. His wife was informed that evening that he had been killed.
He was buried on October 11 in Dimona. He is survived by his wife, Olga, their three children, Michal, 10, Daniel, 7, and Talia, 2, and his seven siblings, Elena, Natasha, Vitaly, Pavel, Sergey, Vyacheslav (Slav) and Denis.
Alik was born in Bukhara, Uzbekistan, the seventh of eight children in a Jewish family with Polish-Ukrainian roots that fled Nazi persecution, according to an Israel Police eulogy.
In 1997, when Alik was 12, his family moved to Israel and settled in Dimona, where he discovered his love of sports and in particular running. His coach got him to move to the Hadassah Neurim Youth Village near Netanya, where he focused on sports, joined the Wingate Institute and represented Israel overseas in the 400m and 800m races.
In 2004 he graduated high school and decided to put sports aside in order to join the Border Police, serving in the Yamas covert tactical unit for three years. After his release, he joined a friend working in car sales, and in August 2012 he joined the Israel Police.
Throughout his service, Alik served in special ops units, and as a combat training instructor and in 2021 he joined the Magen unit, dedicated to combating drug and weapons smuggling on the eastern and southern borders.
Alik met Olga in 2008 and they married in 2009, and they welcomed their three children in 2013, 2015 and 2020.
“If he was going to fall in battle, it would be while on duty,” his brother, Slav said in a memorial video. “It was in his soul — his work and his love of the country… He was very, very proud to serve his country.”
Olga said in the video that “it’s so hard, it’s really hard,” and her youngest daughter still asks when Dad is coming back all the time.
“Alik was a very good dad, a very good husband, just a good person in general,” she said. “Every minute that he was home, he was with the kids. He’d come home after a shift, sleep for a few hours and then take the kids on a trip, to play, whatever. He was always with the kids. Family to him is very important.”
