Yoel Palgi

Yoel Palgi was born in 1918 in Cluj-Napoca

Yoel Palgi was born Emil Nussbacher in Cluj, then part of Austria-Hungary, in 1918. In 1939 he moved to Mandatory Palestine and joined Kibbutz Afikim, and later a group that went on to found Kibbutz Ma'agan.

He joined the Palmach in 1942 and volunteered for a parachute mission into occupied Europe. On 13 April 1944 he parachuted into Yugoslavia with Peretz Goldstein, and in June they crossed into Hungary and reached Budapest. He was captured and interrogated, escaped from a train, and took part in rescue work in Budapest until the war ended.

In late 1946 he published a book about his mission. Near the end of 1948 he set up the first IDF paratroop unit, and he left the army in April 1949 as a major.

He served as deputy director general of El Al from 1951 to 1959 and headed the civil aviation division of the Transport Ministry from 1960 to 1963. He then served as Israel's ambassador to Tanganyika, Zanzibar and Tanzania. In 1954 he testified in the Kastner trial in support of Kastner.

In 1966 he returned to Israel and became personnel director of Clalit health fund. He was married to anthropologist Phyllis Palgi and had 2 daughters. He died in 1978 and was buried on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.