Avraham Tory

Avraham Tory was born in 1909 in Lazdijai

Tory was born Avraham Golub in Lazdijai, Lithuania, in 1909. He went to high school in Marijampolė and was active in the General Zionist youth movement. He was a gymnast and took part in the first Maccabiah Games in 1932.

He began law studies at the University of Pittsburgh and finished them in Kovno after his father died. He worked as a lawyer and Zionist activist, and in 1939 he attended the Zionist Congress in Geneva.

In the Kovno Ghetto he served as secretary of the Jewish Council of Elders. He kept a diary and gathered a secret archive of documents, photographs and artwork. In March 1944 he buried the material and escaped, then hid on a farm until liberation.

After the war he recovered parts of the archive and married Pnina in 1944. He ran the Mossad LeAliyah Bet office in Rome and settled in Tel Aviv in 1947, where he founded a law firm. His records served as evidence in war crimes trials, and he testified as a witness.

His diary was published in Hebrew in 1988 and in English in 1990. The original is held by Yad Vashem. He died in Tel Aviv in 2002.