Dr Giora Yoseftal (Hebrew: גיורא יוספטל; 9 August 1912 – 23 August 1962) was an Israeli politician who held several ministerial portfolios in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Biography
Born Georg Josephthal in Nuremberg in Germany, Yoseftal was a member of the Yiddisher Yudenbund youth movement in his teens. After high school he studied law and economics at the University of Heidelberg, Berlin, Munich and Basel, gaining a PhD in jurisprudence at the latter.
In 1932 he joined Habonim, and the following year was appointed head of the youth department of the Bavarian Jewish community. He moved to Berlin in 1934 and two years later was elected secretary general of the German branch of HeHalutz. In 1936 he married Senetta Yoseftal, later also an Israeli politician.
Yoseftal emigrated to Mandate Palestine in 1938, and two months after arriving was sent to London to try to save German Jewry. He returned to Palestine in 1939, establishing a work brigade in Ra'anana, which later founded kibbutz Gal'ed in 1945.
In March 2018 the city of Netanya decided to change the name of a street named after Yoseftal because of his discriminatory policies towards North African immigrants in the 1950s.[1]
The Yoseftal Medical Center in Eilat is named for him; he was instrumental in its construction and location but did not live to see it opened.
