Yaakov Weiss

Yaakov Weiss (Hebrew;יעקב וייס; July 15, 1924 - July 29, 1947) was a Hungarian Jew born in Czechoslovakia and member of the Irgun Jewish guerrilla organization in Mandatory Palestine. After saving hundreds of Jews during Holocaust, he illegally immigrated to Palestine, joined the Irgun, and fought the British during the Jewish insurgency in Palestine. He was one of three Irgun members executed for their part in the Acre Prison break, which triggered the Irgun's retaliatory hanging of two British soldiers. He is memorialized in Israel today as one of 12 Olei Hagardom.

Yaakov (Imre) Weiss was born in 1924 in Nové Zámky, Czechoslovakia, to a Hungarian-speaking Jewish family, the son of Joseph and Helena Weiss. He had one sister, Edith. At age 10 was sent to the Hebrew Gymnasium in Munkács. He developed Revisionist Zionist views and joined the Betar youth movement.

In 1943, following his father's death and with World War II underway, Weiss fled to Budapest, hoping to get to Palestine from there. While in Budapest, he frequently disguised himself a Hungarian military officer or an SS officer, stole birth certificates and passports, and used the fraudulent documents to save hundreds of Jews. He would frequently travel to ghettos, especially those in Miskolc, Debrecen, Košice, and Eger, and demand the Nazi authorities release individual Jews he picked out, producing forged documents "proving" they were Christians. However, he did not manage to produce documents for his mother and sister in time to prevent their deportation to Auschwitz, where his mother was murdered but his sister survived.

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