Aryeh Tartakower

Aryeh Tartakower was born in 1897 in Brody

Tartakower was born in 1897 in Brody, Eastern Galicia. His father, Nathan Tartakower, was a Zionist activist. As a youth he helped found the Tzeirei Zion youth movement in Galicia.

In 1914 the family moved to Vienna, where he studied law at the University of Vienna. He received a doctorate in law in 1920 and later a second doctorate in political science. He served in the Austro-Hungarian army from 1916 to 1918.

He immigrated to the Land of Israel in 1920 and joined the Hapoel Hatzair party, but returned to Vienna in 1922 after falling ill. From 1922 to 1939 he was active in Poland, leading the Zionist labor party there and running a network of Hebrew and Polish schools. From 1932 he taught sociology at the Institute of Jewish Sciences in Warsaw.

During World War II he worked in New York for the World Jewish Congress, directing its Department of Relief and Rehabilitation. After moving to Israel in 1946 he chaired the Department of Sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He wrote books in Polish, English, Yiddish and Hebrew.

In later years he chaired the Falasha Relief Committee, helping Ethiopian Jews immigrate to Israel. He died in Jerusalem in 1982.