20 Facts About Yehuda Hiss

Yehuda Hiss was born on 1946 and is a retired Israeli pathologist.

Yehuda Hiss served as the Chief Pathologist at the Abu Kabir Institute of Forensic Medicine between 1988 and possibly as late as 2005.

Yehuda Hiss's position as director was a subject of controversy.

Yehuda Hiss was dismissed from this position after the legal system took up some of the charges against him.

Investigations of the newspaper Al-Ahram, revealed that Yehuda Hiss had removed organs, bones and other tissues from corpses, against the expressed wishes of family, and had sold many of the organs he removed to medical institutions and universities.

Yehuda Hiss remained the chief pathologist of the Institute and regained his position as director before being dismissed by the Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman on Oct 15 2012.

Yehuda Hiss was born in Poland shortly after the end of World War II.

Yehuda Hiss's family immigrated to Israel when he was ten years old.

Yehuda Hiss studied medicine in Israel, Italy, Austria, Britain and the United States.

Yehuda Hiss became the director and chief pathologist at Abu Kabir in 1988.

Yehuda Hiss performed the autopsy on Yitzhak Rabin after his 1995 assassination; his report was challenged in March 1999 by a group of Israeli academics.

Yehuda Hiss told Haaretz that Sharif's DNA was matched to samples provided by two British detectives and the cause of death was determined to be drowning.

Yehuda Hiss performed the autopsy on Rachel Corrie, an American woman killed by an Israeli bulldozer while attempting to protect a Palestinian home from being demolished.

All the dead from such attacks are brought to the Forensic Institute, and Yehuda Hiss had been present to attend to, "the dismembered victims and shattered victims," in all but one attack.

Rosenblum, writing in The Jerusalem Post in October 2000 cited a 12-page investigative report in November 1999 by the local Tel Aviv newspaper Ha'ir claiming that medical students at Abu Kabir under Yehuda Hiss' direction were allowed to practice on bodies sent there for autopsy, and body parts were transferred for transplant without permission from the families.

In January 2001, Yediot Aharonot claimed the institute headed by Yehuda Hiss had been involved in "organ sales" of body parts to universities and medical schools for research and training, citing evidence including the "price listings" for body parts.

Israel's Ministry of Health convened a committee to investigate the claims which found that Yehuda Hiss had been involved for years in the sale of illegally removed body parts to medical schools.

Yehuda Hiss was never charged with any crime, but was forced to step down from running the state morgue in 2004.

Yehuda Hiss ceased being the director of the institute in 2005 when allegations of a trade in organs resurfaced.

Yehuda Hiss was given only a reprimand and continued to hold his position as chief pathologist at Abu Kabir and eventually regained his position as director.