Yehuda Hiss

Yehuda Hiss was born in 1946 in Łódź

Yehuda Hiss was born in Łódź, Poland, on May 11, 1946, under the name Jurek Karczewski. At 10 he moved to Israel with his parents in the Gomułka Aliyah and lived in Tel Aviv.

He served in the IDF combat engineering corps and then began studying economics. He later studied medicine at the University of Bologna and trained in pathology in Israel and abroad. From the 1990s he studied forensic pathology in the United States, Switzerland, Italy and England.

In 1988 he became director of the Institute of Forensic Medicine at Abu Kabir. He performed the autopsy of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and presented his findings to the Shamgar Commission, and he also performed the autopsy of Rachel Corrie. He taught at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University and at the Hebrew University and Hadassah medical school.

In December 2000 journalist Ronen Bergman reported on irregularities at the institute, including removal of organs without families' knowledge. The Segalson Committee supported the claims, and police recommended charges, but the attorney general chose disciplinary proceedings only. Health Minister Danny Naveh removed him as director in May 2004.

He stayed on as chief pathologist until Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman dismissed him in October 2012. Several families won compensation in lawsuits against him and the institute.