Ze’ev Hadari

Ze’ev Hadari was born in 1916 in Poland

Ze'ev Hadari, born Vania Pomerantz, was born in Poland in 1916. He was a leader of the HeHalutz movement there and in 1931 helped set up a training farm in Lodz. In 1935 he moved to the Land of Israel and joined Kibbutz Givat HaShlosha.

During World War II he worked in Istanbul for the Jewish Agency rescue committee, handling contact with the Jews of Hungary. He linked the Yishuv leaders with Joel Brand, who proposed the Blood for Goods deal, which never took place. In 1944 he entered Bulgaria and helped found HeHalutz there.

In 1945 he joined the Mossad LeAliyah Bet and became deputy to its head, Shaul Avigur, in Europe, working from Paris. He organized the Exodus ship operation and took part in the Czechoslovak arms deal. In the War of Independence he served in the IDF as a soldier in the Harel Brigade and was wounded.

With David Ben-Gurion's support, he studied nuclear physics at the Sorbonne and earned a doctorate. Back in Israel, he helped establish the nuclear research center in Dimona and sat on the reactor planning committee. He also worked to found a university in Beersheba, later Ben-Gurion University, where he was a professor of nuclear physics.

In 1955 he took part in a public debate over the Kastner affair. He received the Yitzhak Sadeh Prize in 1983 and died in Beersheba in 2001. Streets in Beersheba and Bat Hefer bear his name.