Avraham Barkai

Avraham Barkai was born in 1921 in Berlin

Barkai was born in 1921 in Berlin to an Orthodox family of Eastern European origin. His father was a scribe of religious texts. He studied only at Jewish schools, and from 1935 to 1938 he lived at the Beit Ahawah Jewish children's home.

At his parents' initiative he immigrated to the Land of Israel in 1938 and never saw them again. As a member of Hashomer Hatzair he studied agriculture and was sent to Negba. He married Shoshke in 1947, and they had 3 children. He worked for 20 years in farming and youth education at Kibbutz Lehavot HaBashan.

From 1963 he studied history and economics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He completed a bachelor's degree in economics in 1967 and final exams in history in 1972. In 1977 he received a doctorate from Tel Aviv University for a study of the Nazi economic system.

He taught economics and economic history part time from 1967 to 1979. An expanded version of his doctoral study appeared as a book in 1988. He did research at the Leo Baeck Institute in Jerusalem and at Yad Vashem, and wrote on the Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith.

In 1997 he joined a historical commission set up by Deutsche Bank to study its Nazi era history. The Free University of Berlin gave him an honorary doctorate in 2003. He died on 29 February 2020 at Lehavot HaBashan.