Abba Ahimeir

Abba Ahimeir was born in 1897 in Babruysk

Abba Shaul Gaisinovich was born in 1897 in Dolgoe, a village near Babruysk in the Russian Empire. He came to the Land of Israel in 1912 and studied at the Herzliya Gymnasium in Tel Aviv. A visit home in 1914 was cut short by World War I, and he finished school in Russia.

His brother Meir was killed in battle, and he later took the name Ahimeir in his memory. He studied philosophy at Liège University and the University of Vienna. In 1924 Vienna gave him a PhD for a thesis on Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West.

In 1924 he settled in the country and worked as a librarian, laborer and teacher in Zikhron Ya'akov, Geva and Nahalal. In 1928 he joined the Revisionist movement with Uri Zvi Greenberg and Yehoshua Yeivin. In 1930 he founded Brit HaBirionim, which protested against British rule and, from 1933, against Nazi Germany.

After Haim Arlosoroff was killed in June 1933, Ahimeir was arrested and charged over the murder, and he was cleared of that charge. He was then convicted of organizing an illegal clandestine organization and sentenced to 21 months in prison. He was arrested again in 1937 and held in Acre Prison.

After 1948 he sat on the editorial boards of the Herut daily and the Hebrew Encyclopedia, writing mainly on history and Russian literature. He died of a heart attack on June 6, 1962. His sons Ya'akov and Yosef became journalists.