Joseph Harmatz

Joseph Harmatz was born in 1925 in Rokiškis

Harmatz was born in 1925 to a well-off Jewish family in Rokiškis, Lithuania. After Nazi Germany occupied Lithuania, he and his family were moved to the Vilnius Ghetto. His younger brother and grandparents were killed, his older brother died in military action, and his father took his own life.

Left alone with his mother at 16, he escaped the ghetto through the sewers. He then joined a group of partisans fighting the Nazis.

After the war he joined Nakam, a group of 50 former underground fighters led by Abba Kovner that sought revenge for the Holocaust. In April 1946 a group member poisoned 3,000 loaves of bread with arsenic at a camp in Nuremberg holding 12,000 SS members. About 2,000 prisoners fell ill, and documents released in 2016 stated there were no deaths.

He moved to Israel in 1950 and helped Jews resettling from many countries. He served as director general of the ORT Israel network from 1967 to 1979 and then led World ORT. In 1998 he published the book From the Wings.

Harmatz lived in Tel Aviv, where he died at home in 2016. He was survived by two sons.