Isaac Ben-Aharon

Isaac Ben-Aharon was born in 1906 in Bosanci

He was born Yitzhak Nussenbaum in 1906 in the village of Bosanci, near Suceava in Bukovina, then part of Austria-Hungary. He was the seventh child of Aharon and Perl, who came from Galicia. He went to high school in Cernăuţi and studied political science in Berlin.

He led Hashomer Hatzair in Romania and moved to Mandate Palestine in 1928. In 1933 he joined kibbutz Givat Haim, and after the 1952 split he stayed in Givat Haim (Meuhad) for the rest of his life. He was Secretary of the Tel Aviv Workers' Council from 1932 to 1938 and Secretary of Mapai from 1938 to 1939.

In 1940 he joined the British Army to fight Nazi Germany. He was captured in Greece in 1941 and held as a prisoner of war until 1945.

After the war he became a leader of Mapam, and after its 1954 split a leader of Ahdut HaAvoda. He served in the Knesset across several terms and was Minister of Transport until 1962, when he resigned. From 1969 to 1973 he was General Secretary of the Histadrut.

He left active politics in 1977 but kept voicing socialist views. He received the Israel Prize in 1995 and died at his kibbutz in 2006.