Yerushalmi, Eliezer

Eliezer Yerushalmi was born in the town of Gorodishche in the family of Rabbi Joseph of Jerusalem. From three years old he lived with his parents in Novogrudok , from eleven years old - in Volkovysk . He received a traditional Jewish education. Since 1926 he lived in Lithuania . In 1929 he received a master's degree in philosophy and history of the University of Kovno , in 1933 - a doctorate in history of the University of Koenigsberg . After graduation, he worked as a teacher of geography and other subjects at the Bialik secondary school in Šiauliai . He took an active part in the Tseyrey Zion movement.

In 1941, he ended up in the Šiauliai ghetto , and headed a public school there. In the period from 1942 to 1943 he was the technical secretary in the Judenrat apparatus, recorded the stories of ghetto prisoners. In 1944 he managed to escape to the woods to the partisans, then served in the Soviet Army. In Vilnius organized a boarding school for Jewish children. From June to September 1945, living in Lodz , was a member of the Jewish Historical Commission.

From September 1945 to September 1948 he lived in Rome - he headed the department of culture and education at the Refugee Center, taught Hebrew literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary, was the director of the department of education, was among the founders of a network of Jewish schools, sanatoriums for children and the organizers of training courses teachers. In 1946-1948 he was a member of the literary magazine "Ain Gang" in Rome .

In 1949 he emigrated to Israel . He lived in Haifa . He was a member of the local committee of the teachers' union and the Central Committee for Culture. He was among the founders of the organization of secondary school teachers. He took an active part in the work on the documentation of Yad Vashem , collecting materials on the history of the Holocaust in Lithuania .

He made his debut in literature with journalistic articles in the Russian newspaper Segodnya ( Riga ). He began to write in Yiddish in 1927. It was also printed in Hebrew at the same time. The first book, a brief Jewish history in Yiddish, was published in 1946 in Rome . In the same place in 1947 a book was published about the life and work of Chaim Nakhman Bialik . In 1959, the book The Death of Lithuanian Jews in Hebrew was published in Tel Aviv . In 1958, the book “The History of Siauliai” was published in Jerusalem , and in 1960 in Berlin, a book about the children of the ghetto. In 1957 he was awarded the World Jewish Congress Award for the novel “From the Northern Forests to the Carmel Mountains”.

One of the streets of Haifa bears his name ^[1] . Yerushalmi - uncle of Leon Yuris .

• Yerushalmi Eliezer - article from the Russian Jewish Encyclopedia