Harold Simon

Harold Simon was born in 1920 in Orange Free State Province

Simon was born in 1920 in the Orange Free State, South Africa. His father came from Lithuania and his mother from England. He studied accounting and commerce at the University of Witwatersrand.

In 1941 he volunteered for the South African Air Force and served as a navigator and bombardier. After the war he went back to Johannesburg, worked as an accountant and married Myra Weinberg.

In May 1948, three weeks after the wedding, the couple moved to Israel and both joined the Israeli Air Force during the War of Independence. In June 1948 he became the air force's chief of operations, and he flew 24 reconnaissance and bombing missions. He left the air force in 1950 as a major and stayed in Israel.

In 1962 he founded the Simon and Wiesel Insurance Agency, which dealt in life insurance, and in 2000 he sold its portfolios to Migdal. From 1968 he chaired World Machal, and he was a founding member of the Menachem Begin Heritage Foundation in Jerusalem. His role in 1948 was shown in the film Above and Beyond.

He received the TELFED Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014 and the Sylvan Adams Bonei Zion Prize in 2019. He died on 28 February 2022 at the age of 101.