Colette Avital

Colette Avital was born in 1939 in Bucharest

Avital was born Colette Abramovich in Bucharest, Romania, in 1939. During World War II her family was forced to wear the yellow badge, and later the communist regime persecuted them. In 1950 she immigrated to Israel with her parents, who settled in Tel Aviv.

She studied at the Saint Joseph school in Jaffa and finished high school at Ironi Hey. She earned a bachelor's degree in political science and English literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a master's in public administration at Harvard University.

As a student she began working at the Foreign Ministry as a secretary, and she was among the first women to pass its cadet exams. She served in Brussels, Boston and Paris, was ambassador to Portugal from 1988 to 1992 and consul general in New York from 1992. In 1996 she became deputy director general in charge of Western Europe.

She entered the Knesset in 1999 and initiated a commission on locating the property of Holocaust victims. She chaired the Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Committee and was deputy speaker. In 2007 she ran for president and withdrew after the first round, and in 2009 she lost her seat.

From 2012 she chaired the Center of Holocaust Survivor Organizations in Israel, and in 2013 she became a vice president of the Socialist International. In 2021 she published an autobiography. She lives in Tel Aviv.