Moshé Prywes

Moshé Prywes was born in 1914 in Warsaw

Moshe Prywes was born in Warsaw, Poland, on January 3, 1914. He was the eldest son of his family. His parents, brother and sister were killed in the Holocaust.

He studied medicine for 2 years at the University of Tours in France. He finished his medical studies at the University of Warsaw in 1939.

When World War II began, he was drafted into the Polish army as a physician and officer. He was captured by the Russians and held in a labor camp in Siberia from 1940 to 1945. He then headed surgery at a hospital in Kherson, worked in surgery in Gdańsk, and from 1947 to 1951 directed the OSE Jewish health organization in Paris.

In 1951 he immigrated to Israel and joined the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where he helped found the medical school and headed its department of medical education. He became the university's vice president in 1968. He was the first president of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and in 1973 founded its medical school, which combined studies with work in community clinics, serving as its first dean.

He resigned the presidency in 1975 to focus on medicine. After retiring he returned to Jerusalem and edited the Israel Journal of Medical Sciences until his death in March 1998. He published his autobiography, Prisoner of Hope, in 1996.