Moshe Sanbar

Moshe Sanbar was born in 1926 in Kecskemét

Sanbar was born Gusztáv Sandberg in Kecskemét, Hungary, in 1926. His parents died in the Holocaust in 1944. In June 1944 he was drafted into the Hungarian Army labor battalions, later held at Dachau, and freed by Allied forces on May 2, 1945.

After the war he studied economics in Budapest and was active in the Zionist movement in Hungary. In early 1948 he joined the Hagana, led a group of 60 emigrants to the country, and was badly wounded at Latrun. He earned an MA from the Hebrew University in 1953.

From 1951 he worked as a researcher at the Institute for Social Applied Research and studied income distribution. In 1958 he joined the Ministry of Finance, where he later headed the Budget Directorate and advised Levi Eshkol and Pinhas Sapir.

He was Governor of the Bank of Israel from 1971 to 1976 and chaired the Sanbar Commission on local government from 1977 to 1981. He chaired Bank Leumi from 1988 to 1995. He also worked for Holocaust survivors and held senior roles in the Claims Conference.