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Mordechai Oren

Mordechai Oren was a leader of Mapam and Kibbutz Artzi Hashomer Hatzair who was tried in a Prague show trial in the early 1950s and became known as the "prisoner of Prague."

1905 to 1985The "prisoner of Prague" affairLeadership in MapamThe book Prague Prisoner's Notes

Born: 16 March 1905, Pidhaitsi
Died: 27 February 1985, Afula
Occupation: opinion journalist, journalist
Party: United Workers Party

Mordechai Oren was born in 1905 in Pidhaitsi

Mordechai Oren was born in 1905 in Podhajce, a town in Galicia. His original name was Markus Ornstein. He was one of the founders of the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement.

He moved to Mandatory Palestine in 1929 and joined a Hashomer Hatzair group in Ness Ziona. In 1934 he settled in Kibbutz Mizra, and he later went on missions to London, Paris and Geneva. He was elected to the Jewish National Council in 1944 and helped found Mapam in 1948.

Oren supported the Soviet Union and the pro-Soviet line in Mapam. In 1951, after a conference in Berlin, he was arrested in Prague and accused of being a Zionist agent. In a show trial that was part of the Prague Trials, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

His case caused shock in the Israeli left and led to a split in Mapam and the kibbutz movement. He was released in 1956 and said the charges were false. In 1963 Czechoslovak authorities cleared him, the last of those convicted in the Prague Trials to be cleared.

He published his book Prague Prisoner's Notes in 1958 and was secretary general of the Mapam World Union from 1960 to 1964. He was married to Rega Varshaviak and had 2 children. He died in 1985 and was buried at Kibbutz Mizra.