Amos Manor

Amos Manor was born in 1918 in Sighetu Marmației

Manor was born Arthur Mendelowitz in 1918 to a Jewish family in Sighetu Marmației, then in Austria-Hungary and now in Romania. As a youth he was a member and a founder of a Zionist youth movement. He studied engineering in Mulhouse, France.

During World War II he was drafted into the Hungarian Army, where Jewish recruits did forced labor. In 1944 he was deported with his family to Auschwitz, and part of his family was killed there. He survived and was later sent to Mauthausen in Austria.

After the war he worked for Mossad LeAliyah Bet in Romania and helped organize ships of Jewish immigrants. He served under the alias Amos, which he later took as his first name. In 1949 he and his wife left Romania with forged passports and reached Israel.

Soon after arriving he joined the Shin Bet and rose to deputy director in 1952 and director in 1953. During his tenure the service obtained Khrushchev's secret speech and built intelligence ties with the United States. He took part in Operation Bren in 1954 and handled the case of Levi Levi, who was exposed as a spy for Poland in 1957.

After leaving the Shin Bet he went into business and sat on several boards. In 1981 he became chairman of the First International Bank, and he was a partner in the Atlas hotel company. He received the Herzl Prize and died in 2007.