Naftali Feder

Naftali Feder was born in 1920 in Olkusz

Feder was born in 1920 in Olkusz, Poland. His father was an industrialist who owned a shoe factory, and he had an older brother. In high school he was active in the Zionist Youth movement, and he later studied for 1 year at a university in Warsaw.

When Germany invaded, he fled east to Soviet-held territory and was drafted into the Red Army. His family stayed behind and was killed in Auschwitz. He was badly wounded in 1943 in the fighting for Kiev and was later released.

After the war he went to Łódź, joined the Hashomer Hatzair leadership and edited its weekly Gesherim. He set up and ran a children's home for Holocaust survivors in Poland, and later ran another in Lindenfels.

He immigrated to Israel in 1949 and served in the IDF. He drove a truck in Haifa, became secretary of the Nesher Workers Council, and in 1957 became treasurer of the Beersheba city council. He was a Jewish Agency emissary in Brazil from 1963 to 1965 and Mapam's secretary from 1968 to 1976.

He was elected to the Knesset on the Alignment list in 1977 and again in 1981, and lost his seat in 1984. He also worked as a UNRWA director for child refugees. He died in 2009.