Eliezer Kaplan

Eliezer Kaplan was born in 1891 in Minsk

Kaplan was born in Minsk in the Russian Empire, one of 10 children of a family that ran a wholesale business in weaving thread. He studied at a heder and a high school in Łowicz. He joined the Socialist Zionist Party in 1905 and helped found Zionist youth movements in 1908 and 1912.

In 1917 he graduated as a building engineer from a technical school in Moscow. In 1919 he was part of the Ukrainian delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference. He married Dvora Kaplan, a pediatrician, and they had 2 daughters.

He immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1920 and was soon sent to Berlin to run Hitachdut's office. Back in 1923, he headed the technical department of the Tel Aviv municipality and sat on the city council from 1925 to 1933. From 1933 to 1948 he served on the Jewish Agency board as its treasurer.

On 14 May 1948 he signed the Declaration of Independence and became Minister of Finance. Elected to the first Knesset for Mapai, he also served as Minister of Trade and Industry from 1949 to 1950. As finance minister he secured foreign loans, American aid and a World Bank loan.

In 1952 he left the Finance Ministry for health reasons and became Israel's first Deputy Prime Minister. He suffered a heart attack on a ship and died in Genoa on 13 July 1952. He was the first person buried in the national leaders section at Mount Herzl.