Israel Meir Lau
| Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau | |
|---|---|
| Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv Chairman of Yad Vashem |
|
 |
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| Other | former Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel |
| Personal details | |
| Birth name | Yisrael Meir Lau |
| Born |
1 June 1937 Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland |
| Nationality | Israeli |
| Denomination | Orthodox |
| Residence | Tel Aviv |
| Parents | Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau |
| Children | 8 children including David Lau |
Yisrael Meir Lau (Hebrew: ישראל מאיר לאו; born 1 June 1937) is an Israeli and the Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, Israel, and Chairman of Yad Vashem. He previously served as the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel from 1993 to 2003.
Lau was born on 1 June 1937, in the Polish town of Piotrków Trybunalski. His father, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau (Polish: Mojżesz Chaim Lau), the last Chief Rabbi of the town, was killed in the Treblinka extermination camp. Yisrael Meir is the 38th generation in an unbroken family chain of rabbis.
As a seven-year-old, after traumatic separation from his mother, Lau was imprisoned in a Nazi slave labor camp and then in Buchenwald extermination camp. He has attributed his unlikely survival to heroic efforts of his older brother Naphtali Lau-Lavie who concealed him, at constant risk, and enlisted other prisoners in this effort. Yisrael Meir was freed from the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945. He became a poster child for miraculous survival, and the inhumanity of the Nazi regime, after U.S. Army chaplain Rabbi Herschel Schacter detected him hiding behind a heap of corpses when the camp was liberated. Lau has credited a teen prisoner with protecting him in the camp (later determined by historian Kenneth Waltzer to be Fyodor Michajlitschenko). His entire family was murdered, with the exception of his older brother, Naphtali Lau-Lavie, his half brother, Yehoshua Lau-Hager, and his uncle already living in Mandate Palestine.
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