Yitzhak Artzi

Yitzhak Artzi was born in 1920 in Siret

Artzi was born Izo Hertzig in Siret, Romania, into a Hassidic family. He went to high schools in Siret and Cernăuți and then to the Jewish College in Bucharest. He was active in the HaNoar HaTzioni youth movement and became one of its heads in Romania.

During World War II he was among the heads of the Zionist underground in Romania and helped rescue children from the Transnistria camps. After the war he worked in illegal immigration to the Land of Israel. He arrived in 1946 on an immigrant ship, was deported to Cyprus, and kept working in the camps there.

He was a member of Alonei Abba from 1947 to 1950. He studied law and economics at Tel Aviv University and became a lawyer. He was deputy editor of the Zmanim newspaper and served as secretary general of the Progressive Party, the Liberal Party and the Independent Liberals.

From 1966 to 1969 he headed the Youth Aliyah department of the Jewish Agency. He served in the Tel Aviv city leadership from 1974 to 1983 and entered the Knesset in 1984 on the Alignment list. In 1988 he moved to Shinui and lost his seat that year.

Later he worked for Holocaust survivors and served on the Yad Vashem council. In 1994 he co-founded a fund for the welfare of Holocaust survivors and chaired it. He published an autobiography in 1999 and died in Tel Aviv in 2003. His children are the singer Shlomo Artzi and the writer Nava Semel.