Giora Yoseftal

Giora Yoseftal was born in 1912 in Nuremberg

Yoseftal was born Georg Josephthal in Nuremberg, Germany, to a well-off liberal Jewish family. His grandfather Gustav was a lawyer and head of the Jewish community in Nuremberg. As a teenager he joined a Jewish youth group, and he finished high school in 1930.

He studied law and economics in Heidelberg, Berlin and Munich, and completed a doctorate in law in Basel. In 1932 he joined Habonim, and in 1933 he became head of the youth department of the Bavarian Jewish community. In 1936 he became secretary general of HeHalutz in Germany and married Senetta, later a Knesset member.

He moved to the Land of Israel in 1938 and was soon sent to London to work on saving German Jews. In 1939 he took part in an operation that brought 480 German Jews by sea on the ship Dora. From 1943 to 1945 he served in the British Army.

From 1945 he worked at the Jewish Agency on immigrant absorption and sat on its board from 1947 to 1952. In 1952 he took part in the talks on the Reparations Agreement with West Germany. His policies toward immigrants from North Africa drew criticism, and in 2018 Netanya decided to rename a street named for him.

He was secretary general of Mapai from 1956 to 1959 and then entered the Knesset as Minister of Labour. After the 1961 elections he became Minister of Housing and Minister of Development. He died in office in 1962, and the Yoseftal Medical Center in Eilat bears his name.