Natan Peled

Natan Peled was born in 1913 in Odesa

Natan Peled was born Natan Fridl in Odesa in 1913, the elder of two children in a Zionist family. When he was 8, his family moved to Chișinău, then part of Romania. There he studied at the Hebrew Tarbut gymnasium and joined Hashomer Hatzair, later coordinating the movement in Romania and serving as secretary of the HeHalutz center.

He immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1933 and joined the Melet group in Nes Tziona, where he sat on the local Workers' Council. In 1934 he joined kibbutz Sarid. He married Mania, a friend from Bessarabia, and his parents were killed in the Holocaust in Romania.

He held posts in Kibbutz Artzi, and from 1939 to 1944 he was secretary of the Histadrut's security committee. From 1946 to 1948 he was an emissary of Hashomer Hatzair and the Histadrut in the United States. He was secretary of Hashomer Hatzair-Kibbutz Artzi from 1950 to 1955 and political secretary of Mapam from 1956.

In 1958 he became Israel's envoy to Bulgaria, and he then served as ambassador to Austria until 1963. He was elected to the Knesset in 1965 and lost his seat in 1969. In 1970 he became Minister of Immigrant Absorption without being a Knesset member, and after the Yom Kippur War he argued the whole government should resign.

From 1975 to 1980 he was again secretary of Kibbutz Artzi. He returned to kibbutz Sarid and died in 1992, survived by two daughters.