Yehoshua Arieli

Yehoshua Arieli was born in 1916 in Rybáře

Arieli was born Karl Löbel in 1916 in Carlsbad, Bohemia, the youngest child with 3 older sisters. He grew up in a socialist and Zionist home. He came to the Land of Israel in 1931, studied farming at the Ben Shemen youth village, and moved to Kibbutz Heftziba in 1933.

He began studying music, philosophy and history at the Hebrew University in 1937. Military service interrupted his studies. He finished his master's degree in 1951, studied at Harvard until 1953, and received his PhD in history from the Hebrew University in 1955.

In 1940 he joined the British Army and was sent to Greece in 1941, where he was captured at Kalamata. He spent 4 years as a prisoner of war in camps in Greece, Austria and Germany, hiding his Jewish identity. After the war he commanded a Haganah company, guarded David Ben-Gurion, and was the first commander of Gadna in Jerusalem during the War of Independence.

He taught in the Hebrew University's general history department, becoming associate professor in 1963 and full professor in 1972. In 1967 he founded the first American studies department in Israel. He was a founder and the first rector of the University of Haifa, and chaired the Historical Society of Israel.

He helped found the Min HaYesod movement and, after the Six-Day War, the Movement for Peace and Security. His research focused on American democracy and the philosophy of history. He received the Israel Prize in 1993 and died in 2002.