Gideon Hausner

Gideon Hausner was born in 1915 in Lviv

Hausner was born in Lemberg, now Lviv, in 1915. His father, Bernard Hausner, was a rabbi, economist and Zionist who later sat in the Polish Sejm. The family moved to Mandatory Palestine in 1927 and settled in Tel Aviv.

He attended high school in Tel Aviv and studied philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He then studied law at the Jerusalem Law School. He spoke Polish, Hebrew, Yiddish, English and German.

He was a member of the Haganah and served in the Etzioni Brigade in the 1948 war. Afterward he was a military prosecutor and then president of the military court.

He became Attorney General in 1960 and led the prosecution of Adolf Eichmann in 1961. Eichmann was convicted and sentenced to death. A dispute with Justice Minister Dov Yosef led to the Agranat committee, which backed the independence of the Attorney General in criminal matters, and Hausner resigned in 1963.

He entered the Knesset in 1965 for the Independent Liberals and was a Minister without Portfolio from 1974 to 1977. He lost his seat in 1981. He chaired the Yad Vashem council from 1969 to 1989 and died in 1990.