Getzel Kressel

Getzel Kressel was born in 1911 in Zabolotivtsi

Kressel was born in 1911 in Zablotov, in eastern Galicia, to Yehiel-Michal and Feiga Kressel. His father died in 1916 during World War I, and the family moved to a village in Bohemia until the war ended. As a child he learned to read Hebrew literature from his siblings.

In 1930 he immigrated to the Land of Israel with the Fifth Aliyah and first worked in citrus groves. An article he wrote on Leopold Zunz appeared in Davar, and Dov Sadan became his mentor.

From 1945 to 1951 he worked as an editor at Davar and at the Am Oved publishing house. He helped found and directed the Genazim institute of the Hebrew Writers Association. He wrote over 60 books and over 3,000 newspaper articles and encyclopedia entries on the Hebrew press, Zionism and related subjects.

In 1974 he sold his collection, with about 400,000 newspaper clippings, to Oxford University, where it became the basis of a library. He married writer Isabella Perlis in 1954 and had a son, Ido. He died in 1986 in Holon, where a street is named after him.