YISROEL VAYS

YISROEL VAYS (b. December 13, 1912)

            He was born in Stanislav (Stanislavov), eastern Galicia.  He studied in religious elementary school, yeshiva, and later graduated from a high school.  He spent the years 1927-1935 in Brussels where he was active in “Hapoel hamizraḥi” (Mizrachi workers [religious labor party]).  He was the representative of the Jewish Agency in Belgium.  In 1935 he moved to Israel where he worked as a bank employee, and at the same time he was active in the Haganah (Israel’s pre-independence army).  He took part as an officer in the war of 1948. He was a member of the central committee of “Hapoel hamizraḥi.”  He published articles in: Unzer veg (Our way) in Paris; Tribune sioniste (Zionist tribune) in Brussels (in French).  He edited the publication Yom hayeled (Day of the child), dedicated to the Jewish children saved from Hitler’s Holocaust, in Yiddish and French (Paris, 1947).

Source: D. Tidhar, in Entsiklopedyah leḥalutse hayishuv uvonav (Encyclopedia of the pioneers and builders of the yishuv) (Tel Aviv, 1947-1971), vol. 7, p. 2784.