Childhood in Poland Moshe Bejski was born in the village of
Działoszyce, near
Kraków,
Poland, on 29 December 1921. During his youth, he joined a
Zionist organization that organized the move of young
Polish Jews to
Mandatory Palestine to build a new nation in the Jewish "promised land". However, he was not able to leave for Palestine with his family before the
invasion of Poland in 1939 due to health issues.
The Holocaust The German occupation of Kraków began on 6 September 1939. The area's Jews were murdered or required to live in the
Kraków Ghetto. Bejski's parents and sister were shot soon after they were separated. In 1942, Bejski, along with his brothers Uri and Dov, ended up in the forced
labor camp of
Płaszów. On paper, the brothers were listed as a machine fitter and a draftsman, but Uri had expertise in weapons and Moshe had become a skilled document-forger. Throughout the war, Moshe Bejski helped forge papers and passports that other inmates and Schindler used to smuggle resources to the Jews or to smuggle Jews out of danger. He and his brothers eventually got placed on the famous list for
Oskar Schindler's
factory in occupied
Czechoslovakia, where they spent the remainder of the war in relative safety. He was worker number 531 on Schindler's list. They were liberated by the
Red Army in May 1945. When the brothers discovered the fate of their parents and sister, they decided to emigrate to
Israel.
New life in Israel Bejski was able to begin a new life in the place of his dreams that he hadn't been able to reach when he was a boy, but his Zionist dream soon clashed with reality. His brother Uri was killed by an Arab sniper on the day the Jewish State was recognized by the UN. He served in the
Israel Defense Forces during the
1948 Arab-Israeli War, reaching the rank of captain. In 1949, he was sent to
France to manage the
Youth Aliyah department in Europe and North Africa until 1952. Although he had originally dreamed of becoming an engineer, Bejski completed his law degree at the
Sorbonne in 1951 and was awarded a doctorate in law for a thesis on human rights in the
Bible. After returning to Israel, he was certified as a lawyer in 1953 and became one of the most reputable lawyers in
Tel Aviv. He was appointed a magistrate judge in 1960, a district judge of Tel Aviv-Yafo from 1968 to 1979, and a judge on the
Supreme Court of Israel for 12 years, from 1979 until 1991. He also taught legal courses the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem and
Tel-Aviv University from 1960 through 1969.
The Eichmann Trial Moshe Bejski left his past in Poland behind him. For years no one knew of his history; he was commonly thought to be a Zionist who came to Palestine before the Nazi persecution or even a native born Israeli. He only willingly revealed his story and origins in 1961, during the
trial of Holocaust architect
Adolf Eichmann. He was called on by the state's lead prosecutor,
Gideon Hausner to testify about the
Płaszów concentration camp. Bejski delivered an emotional account of the circumstances at the camp and he conveyed the many crimes committed there to the court. 16 of Israel's top banking and government finance officials were censured, resigned or were otherwise punished for their actions. His response to the philosophical question posed in Holocaust memoir
The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness by
Simon Wiesenthal is featured in current editions of the book. ==Notes==