Ya'akov Winschel

Ya'akov Winschel was born in 1891 in Tbilisi

Winschel was born in 1891 in Tbilisi to Ze'ev and Karolina Winschel. His father was a physician. The family later moved to Baku, where he finished high school and led a Zionist youth group.

He studied medicine in Munich, Geneva and Dorpat from 1910 to 1915 and earned his doctorate in 1916. During World War I he served as a doctor in the Russian army. He trained in surgery in Baku and in 1921 published a surgery textbook with a colleague.

In 1922 he moved with his family to Tel Aviv and worked at Hadassah hospital and later at Clalit. He was a founder of the Revisionist Zionist movement, served on the Tel Aviv city council from 1925 to 1928, and sat in the Assembly of Representatives. In November 1933 Leumit Health Fund was founded in his home, and his clinic became its first clinic.

He also wrote for many newspapers and wrote literary works on figures in Jewish history. He received the Jabotinsky Prize for Literature in 1968 and was named a distinguished citizen of Tel Aviv in 1976. He died in 1980 and was buried in Kiryat Shaul.