Mordecai Oren

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Mordechai Oren (1950)

Mordechai Oren (also: Mordekhai Ornstein and Mordechai Orenstein ; born March 16, 1905 in Podhajce , Galicia ; died February 27, 1985 in Afula ) was an Israeli Mapam politician and journalist. He was a leading representative of the socialist-Zionist movement HaSchomer HaTzair and the kibbutz movement Kibbutz Artzi . In connection with the Slansky trial in Czechoslovakia , he was imprisoned from 1951 to 1956 for alleged espionage.

Life

The son of Moshe Ornstein and Klara Gang grew up in Galicia , where he joined the socialist-Zionist youth movement HaSchomer HaTzair . In 1929 he emigrated to Palestine , where he settled as a farm worker in Kibbutz Mizra . With his wife Rega Larga Varshaviak (1907-1992) he had the children Pouah Gonen and Moshe Oren (journalist). As Schaliach (representative) of HaSchomer HaTzair, he traveled to Berlin in March 1934, which gave the organization a boost in Germany.

He became a representative of the radical left kibbutz movement Kibbutz Artzi, which is close to HaSchomer HaTzair . Oren was one of the founders of the left-wing socialist Mapam party in 1948 , which advocated Israel's foreign policy orientation towards the Soviet Union . In the same year he became a member of the World Jewish Congress (WJC). Oren worked as a journalist for the left-wing newspaper Al HaMischmar , which was close to HaSchomer HaTzair and Mapam, and in 1950 he became one of the two editors of the newspaper.

As a representative of Mapam he took part in November 1951 at the conference of the World Trade Union Confederation in East Berlin. When he then traveled to Prague , he and his cousin, the Israeli trade attaché Shimon Orenstein, were arrested as an alleged spy. You had to testify in the Slansky trial , a Stalinist show trial of 14 Czechoslovak communists, most of whom were Jews. Oren himself was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 1953 for espionage. In the course of the de-Stalinization he was pardoned in May 1956 and was able to return to Israel. He revoked his forced confessions. The Czechoslovak government finally rehabilitated him in 1963, as did Slansky. The anti-Jewish show trials and the persecution of Oren in Czechoslovakia sparked a split in the Mapam and the party turned away from its pro-Soviet stance.

From 1960 to 1964 he was Secretary General of the World Union of Mapam . From 1960 he acted again as editor of the newspaper Al HaMischmar . During a visit to the United States in 1974, Oren met a Soviet diplomat at the United Nations and tried to resume the diplomatic relations between Israel and the Soviet Union that had broken off in 1967. He lived in Kibbutz Mizra until his death.

Publications (selection)

  • On the problem of the Kibuz movement in Erez Yisrael . Berlin 1934
  • On the peace agreement with the revisionists . Berlin 1935
  • Jews, Arabs and British in Palestine. A Left Socialist View . London 1936
  • A Political Prisoner in Prague. 1958.

literature

  • Susanne Blumesberger, Michael Doppelhofer, Gabriele Mauthe: Handbook of Austrian authors of Jewish origin from the 18th to the 20th century . Volume 2: J-R. Edited by the Austrian National Library. Saur, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-598-11545-8 , p. 1001. Entry Oren, Mordecai .
  • Jehuda Reinharz : Hashomer Hazair in Nazi Germany. In: Arnold Paucker (Ed.): The Jews in National Socialist Germany, 1933–1943. Mohr Siebeck, Tuebingen 1986, pp. 317-350.
  • Yaacov Ro'i: Soviet Decision Making in Practice: The USSR and Israel, 1947–1954 . Transaction Books, New Brunswick, NJ 1980, pp.?.
  • Ost -problem , Volume 5 (1953), p. 2047.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jehuda Reinharz : Hashomer Hazair in Nazi Germany. In: Arnold Paucker: The Jews in National Socialist Germany, 1933–1943. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 1986, pp. 317-350, here p. 341.
  2. ↑ a b Mordechai Oren Dies; Israeli Jailed by Czechs. In: New York Times , March 1, 1985, p. 19.
personal data
SURNAME Oren, Mordecai
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ornstein, Mordekhai; Orenstein, Mordecai
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Israeli journalist and politician
DATE OF BIRTH March 16, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Podhajce , Galicia
DATE OF DEATH February 27, 1985
Place of death Afula