Born on Sept 27th, 1909 in the Bessarabia town of Shabo, he first met with violent anti-Semitism when studying in the junior college of Yassy, Romania. This led him to Zionist movements. He entered the Zionist organization Gordonia in Kishinev and soon became one of the founders and leaders of this organization in his hometown. He made every attempt to convince Jewish youth to leave the unfriendly Galut and make Aliya to Zion—Eretz Israel. During WW2, from 1941 to 1945, he fought the Nazis, while in the Red Army, but even there he actively spread Zionist ideas among his fellow soldiers. His whole family perished in the Holocaust. He was arrested in Czechoslovakia, but managed to escape to Romania, where he started an underground organization for the illegal transportation of Romanian Jews to Eretz Israel. In 1952 in Bucharest he was accused of Zionist and anti-communist subversive activity, arrested and transferred to the USSR. His organization was crushed and almost all its members were arrested. He himself was sentenced to 25 years in the Gulag plus 5 years in exile. Most of his sentence was spent in Norilsk camp and, after being released, in 1972, he managed to get to Israel. He died in 1992.
