Iser Lubotzky

Iser Lubotzky was born in 1922 in Vilnius

Lubotzky was born in 1922 in Vilnius, then under Polish rule, to a traditional Jewish family. His father was a Revisionist businessman. He studied at the Hebrew Gymnasium in Vilnius and rose to company commander in Betar.

In 1939 he commanded an observation post in the Polish army and survived when it was bombed. After the German capture of Vilnius he joined the FPO underground in the ghetto. In September 1943 he escaped through the sewers with partisans led by Abba Kovner and fought in the Rūdninkai forest, where he was badly wounded in 1944.

After serving in the NKVD, he left in 1945 for Poland and headed Betar's rescue organization there. He helped organize immigrant ships and sailed to Israel on the Transilvania. He finished law studies in Tel Aviv and recruited new Irgun members as a national recruiting officer, while heading the Ramat Gan group.

After the War of Independence he worked as a lawyer and was active in the Herut movement, chairing its election committee and its tribunal. In the early 1970s he became Herut's legal adviser, and later the Likud's first legal adviser, a voluntary role he held until 1992. He married Rivka, a Holocaust survivor, and they had 4 children. He died in 2009.