17 Facts About Yitzhak Gruenbaum

Yitzhak Gruenbaum was a Polish and later Israeli politician.

Yitzhak Gruenbaum was a leader of the Bloc of National Minorities and one of the top Zionist leaders in interwar Poland.

Yitzhak Gruenbaum served as the first Minister of the Interior of Israel.

Yitzhak Gruenbaum served as editor of several periodicals widely circulated among Polish Jewry, including the Hebrew Ha-Zefirah and the Hebrew weekly Ha-Olam.

In Poland, Gruenbaum headed the Radical Zionist faction, initially known in Poland as Al Hamishmar.

Yitzhak Gruenbaum was the moving force in forming a collaboration with other minority parties represented in the Sejm, including Germans, Ukrainians, and others, to form a Bloc of National Minorities alliance in 1922, that acted to represent the rights of minority populations in Poland.

Yitzhak Gruenbaum's efforts brought about an increase of Jewish representation in the Sejm, which was accompanied by a rise of the political Zionism.

Yitzhak Gruenbaum was known for his courageous and militant stance against his opponents and on behalf of minorities' interests, while equally critical of the ultra-orthodox party Agudat Israel and Jewish lobbying.

In 1942, when word reached the Yishuv of the mass extermination by the German occupying forces taking place in Eastern Europe, Yitzhak Gruenbaum was chosen to head a 12-member Rescue Committee comprising representatives of the various parties.

In 1946, Yitzhak Gruenbaum was among the Jewish Agency directors arrested by the British and interned in a detention camp at Latrun.

Yitzhak Gruenbaum spent his later years on Kibbutz Gan Shmuel, and died in 1970.

Yitzhak Gruenbaum was among a group of 13 leaders forming the provisional government of the emerging State, and, as a member of Provisional State Council, signed its declaration of independence.

Yitzhak Gruenbaum became an adherent of the Mapam socialist-Zionist party, and was known as a declared secularist.

Yitzhak Gruenbaum headed an independent list in the elections for the first Knesset, but failed to obtain the minimum number of votes to secure a seat.

Yitzhak Gruenbaum was later a candidate for President in the 1952 presidential election alongside Yitzhak Ben-Zvi of Mapai, Peretz Bernstein of the General Zionists and Mordechai Nurock of Mizrachi.

Yitzhak Gruenbaum served as editor of the Hebrew Ha-Zefirah, the Hebrew weekly Ha-Olam and the Yiddish daily, Haynt.

Yitzhak Gruenbaum was the editor of the Encyclopedia of Diaspora Communities, The Zionist Movement and its Development and many other books.