Public lifeזיגפריד להמן

Siegfried Lehman

Siegfried Lehmann was an Israeli educator who founded and directed the Ben Shemen Youth Village.

1892 to 1958Founding the Ben Shemen Youth VillageThe 1940 Ben Shemen trialIsrael Prize in education

Born: 13 June 1892, Berlin
Died: 13 February 1958
Occupation: educator, screenwriter, physician, social worker
Founded: 1916)

Siegfried Lehman was born in 1892 in Berlin

Lehmann was born in Berlin in 1892 to an assimilated Jewish family. His father, Paul, owned a shop for antique books.

After high school he studied medicine. During World War I he served as a doctor in the German Army. The war's effect on Jewish life led him to join the Zionist and Socialist movements.

In 1916 he founded the Jüdisches Volksheim in Berlin, a center that cared for and educated neglected Jewish youth from Eastern Europe. After the war he moved to Kaunas, where he set up a home for Jewish children, some of them orphans. There he married Rivka Klibansky, a physician.

He moved to the Land of Israel with a group of his pupils and founded the Ben Shemen Youth Village, an agricultural boarding school. He directed it from 1927 to 1957. In 1940 the British authorities tried and jailed him after weapons depots were found at the village, and his 7 year sentence was later changed to a fine of 400 Palestine pounds.

He received the Israel Prize in education in 1957. He died in 1958 and was buried at Ben Shemen. A collection of his memoirs was published in 1962.