Dr. Eliezer Yerushalmi (Yerushalimsky) — Association of Jews of Vilna and vicinity in Israel

Dr. Eliezer Yerushalmi (Yerushalimsky) (July 1900 - December 10, 1962) was a teacher, writer and public activist in Lithuania and Haifa.

Eliezer Yerushalmi was born in Horodyszcze, in the Baranovichy District (now Belarus), the son of Joseph and Leah, of a Zionist family. His father was ordained a rabbi and served as a judge.

He received a traditional education, and graduated from high school in 1915. During the First World War, he attended teaching courses organized by the German occupation forces and was sent to an internment camp in Białowieża. After the war he began teaching, and after a short service as a volunteer in the Red Army, settled in Lithuania in 1926. Yerushalmi graduated in 1929 with a Master's Degree in philosophy and history from the University of Kovno and with a doctorate in history from the University of Königsberg (the subject of his dissertation was "The Relations between King Sigismund I and the Teutonic Order and the Prussian Duchy in 1510-1525."

After graduating, he began teaching history, geography, and other subjects in high schools in Virbalis and Šiauliai (at the Bialik Gymnasium). At the same time as his educational work, he was active in the Zionist Youth and the Zionist-Socialist Party. He married Sarah Klein, and was the father of Mordechai and Joseph. He believed in the revival of the Hebrew language and maintained it in his family, even during Soviet rule and the ghetto.

In 1941, he was sent to the ghetto in Šiauliai and was appointed principal of the school, which was secretly run on a balcony that also served as the synagogue. In the ghetto, he worked in the morning as a shoemaker, then in education, and at night wrote in his diary and collected historical documents. This archive swelled to thousands of documents that, following a tip-off, were confiscated and fell into the hands of the Soviet authorities after World War II, from which only the "Shavli Notebook" was saved, and later published in 1959.

In 1944, he escaped from the ghetto, and joined the partisans. After the liberation of the area by the Red Army, he enlisted in its ranks, where he served for a while; then came to Vilna, where he established a Jewish school that also included a boarding school for Jewish children left destitute after the war. In 1945 he moved to Lodz, and reached Italy with the "Escape" Movement. In Rome, he headed the Department of Culture and Education of the Refugee Organization Center, taught Hebrew literature at the rabbinical seminary, and as director of the Department of Education was among the founders of a network of Hebrew schools, children's convalescent homes and an organization of teacher training and mentoring courses. He was a member of the editorial board of the literary monthly "In Gang," {On the Way"). He was the editor of the Hebrew file "Nir," participated in the "Baderech" newspaper, and wrote for the New York Yiddish daily " Forverts newspaper (English: Forward ) and other Jewish newspapers.

In 1948, he participated as a delegate in the founding conference of the World Jewish Congress for Culture held in New York.

In February 1949, after the establishment of the State, he fulfilled his Zionist aspirations, immigrated to Israel and settled in Haifa. In Haifa, he established the "High School for Workers 'Children," which was run by a teachers' cooperative and belonged to the workforce, and a seminary for teachers of the workforce (later Gordon College), and ran them for several years. He then went on to teach in a high school as a teacher of history, geography and sociology. He also continued his public activities in Haifa, and was a member of the local committee of the Teachers' Union and of the Cultural Committee Center. He later became one of the founders of the High Schools Teachers Association, a central administration member and editor of the newspaper "Maalot."

As a Holocaust survivor, he greatly assisted in archiving information at Yad Vashem about the period in Lithuania, and with the help of his teaching experience, was a member of a committee whose task was to prepare a Holocaust teaching program in schools.

In 1957, he won the Jewish Congress Award for his book "From the Northern Forests to the Carmel Woods," even before it appeared.

His son Mordechai was killed in 1954 while serving in the IDF. His brother Aharon Yerushalmi and his nephew Leon Yuris were also writers.

A street in Haifa is named after him.

Source: Wikipedia