Hanna Zemer

Hanna Zemer was born in 1924 in Bratislava

Hanna Zemer was born Hanna Haberfeld in Bratislava in 1924, to an ultra-Orthodox, German-speaking Jewish family. Her father, Shlomo Haberfeld, was a rabbi, as was her grandfather.

In the fall of 1944 she was deported to Malchow, a subcamp of Ravensbrück. Most of her family was killed in the Holocaust. After the war she qualified as a teacher and worked for a Zionist newspaper in Germany.

She married Milan Zomer, and they divorced in 1950, shortly after she immigrated to Israel. She later married David Zuta and had a daughter, the economist Shlomit Zuta.

She began in journalism at Omer, a paper for new immigrants, and then moved to Davar as a political and parliamentary correspondent. She reported from Washington, and in 1961 she became head of Davar's Jerusalem office. She was named deputy editor in 1966 and editor in chief in 1970.

She was the first woman in Israel to head a major daily newspaper, and she retired in 1990. She also hosted radio and television programs and wrote about a return visit to Ravensbrück. She died in 2003.