Moshe Bejski

Bejski was born in 1921 in Działoszyce, Poland, and was raised in a religious home. He became active in a Zionist youth movement at a young age. Before the Holocaust, his life and community were rooted in Poland; later, in a foreword to a memorial book for Działoszyce, he emphasized the importance of preserving the memory of the town’s Jewish community and its murdered members.[1][6]

During the Holocaust, Bejski experienced ghettos, underground activity, internment, and concentration and extermination camps. He was sent to Płaszów at age 18 and survived there; he also worked with the underground resistance. The surviving records describe his experiences through several perspectives, including his testimony, memorial accounts, and later interviews.[1][7]

A JewishGen account of the Bejski family says that the parents and three sons—Moszek, Urysz, and Izrael—were transported to Belzec. The brothers were diverted to Płaszów because the Nazis needed labor to build the camp, while their parents were killed at Belzec; all three brothers survived with Schindler’s help. The account identifies Moszek as “the Judge.”[8]

Bejski was among the Jews rescued by Oskar Schindler. He helped prepare forged stamps for Schindler while Schindler bought and sold goods on the black market, and the two remained close after the war. Bejski later described Schindler’s rescue work as exceptional because of both its large scale and its duration.[1][9]

After the war, Bejski immigrated to Israel in 1945. He lived at Kibbutz Tel Yitzhak, worked at an educational agricultural institution in Magdiel and in the secretariat of HaOved HaTzioni, and was active in Aliyah Bet. During Israel’s War of Independence, he served in the Israel Defense Forces General Staff as an officer handling personnel matters, including cultural and welfare duties, and left the army with the rank of captain.[1]

Bejski studied law at the Sorbonne in Paris beginning in 1946, with a particular focus on public international law. He earned a doctorate in law; his dissertation examined sources of human rights in the Bible. After his studies, Youth Aliyah sent him to France to direct its department in Europe and North Africa, a post he held for about three years. He returned to Israel in 1952, completed an internship at the Rotenshtraich-Gitzelter law firm, and entered legal practice.[1]

He also served in Histadrut institutions, including its supreme court and legislative committee, and on the Tel Aviv Workers’ Council. In 1960 he was appointed to the Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court. During the following nine years, he also taught in the law faculties of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University. After eight years as a magistrate, he became a judge on the Tel Aviv District Court, sitting on serious-crime panels and criminal appeals.[1]

Bejski served as an acting Supreme Court justice in 1975–1976 and received a permanent appointment in 1979. He remained on the court until 1991. One account describes his judicial career as 31 years in all, including 12 years on the Supreme Court. After retiring, he continued to provide legal opinions and conduct arbitrations.[1][10]

Among the rulings associated with his judicial work was a 1980 decision, written with Justice Shlomo Levin, rejecting selective refusal of military service in the case of conscientious objector Gadi Algazi. The ruling stated that a military system could not accept a general principle under which soldiers chose where to serve for economic, social, or conscientious reasons.[1]

Bejski also set out conditions for relying on a governmental promise in the Dishon case. The official making the promise had to possess authority, intend to give it legal force, be capable of fulfilling it, and lack a legal justification for changing or canceling it. These cases illustrate aspects of his work in public law and the legal duties of state institutions.[1]

In 1988, Bejski sat as one of five judges in Moshe Neiman et al. v. Chairman of the Central Election Committee for the Eleventh Knesset. The case concerned whether the Central Election Committee had been justified in banning Kach. A commentary on the case identifies Bejski as a member of the bench.[11]

While serving as a magistrate, Bejski testified at the Eichmann trial about the killing of Jews at Płaszów. He described mass shootings and was asked by prosecutor Gideon Hausner why prisoners had not rebelled. Bejski answered that there was no single explanation and that the conditions of the time could not be conveyed fully in a courtroom.[1]

A Yad Vashem account of the trial describes Bejski’s testimony about an order requiring inmates to watch a public hanging. Thousands of prisoners were surrounded by armed guards. In responding to the question about revolt, he pointed to fear, the conditions of wartime, and uncertainty about the fate of prisoners’ families as part of the circumstances shaping their choices.[7]

Bejski’s testimony and later interviews kept attention on the experiences of prisoners and survivors, including the constraints under which people lived in the camps. In a 1983 oral-history interview for a documentary about Schindler, he discussed his experiences in Płaszów, the liquidation of the Krakow Ghetto, Schindler’s rescue efforts, conditions at Brünnlitz, and survivors’ postwar relationship with Schindler.[12]

Bejski also spoke about the psychological difficulty of recalling camp selections and transports. In an interview about the May selections at Płaszów, made in preparation for the arrival of 10,000 Hungarian Jews, the account’s author noted that Bejski needed several breaks before completing his recollections. The chapter does not identify which particular selection or transport incidents he described.[13]

His work in Holocaust remembrance extended to writing. Bejski wrote the foreword to the Działoszyce Yizkor book, which he said was intended to preserve the memory of the town’s Jewish community and those murdered. He warned that memory could fade as survivors and their descendants died or became distant from the town’s traditions, and wrote, “it is our town that was and is no more!”[6]

In that foreword, Bejski attributed postwar violence against returning Jews and the destruction of the cemetery to local Polish residents. Those statements are part of his account in the memorial book and are presented here as his claims, rather than as independently established findings.[6]

The National Library of Israel catalog associates Bejski with eight articles, three books, and two archival items, and links his records to material on Schindler. These holdings include his 1994 article “Oskar Schindler and ‘Schindler’s List’,” published in Yad Vashem Studies 24, which brought together documents related to Schindler’s rescue and the survivors’ history.[14][5]

Bejski’s most prominent Holocaust-remembrance role was chairing Yad Vashem’s Commission for the Designation of the Righteous. He joined the commission in 1966 and became its chairman in 1970, serving until 1995. He succeeded Justice Moshe Landau; after Bejski’s departure, retired Supreme Court justice Yaakov Maltz succeeded him.[15][3]

The commission evaluates cases and recommendations concerning the Righteous Among the Nations, the title for non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. Yad Vashem describes its criteria as requiring that a person helped save a life, endangered their own life, and acted without monetary or other reward. Commission members, most of them Holocaust survivors, serve voluntarily.[3]

A 1971 issue of Yad Vashem News described the work as “an especially delicate” task. It reported that the committee, active since 1963, met monthly and considered testimony from people who had been saved alongside other documents. Its stated considerations included the motives for rescue, the degree of danger, and the nature of the action. The newsletter said that by June 1971, 850 people had received the title.[16]

The same 1971 newsletter identified Bejski as a District Court judge and said he was serving as committee chairman after Landau. It spelled his surname “Beisky,” a transliteration variation also reflected in some records; other sources use “Bejski.”[16][1]

In his own writing about rescue, Bejski distinguished lifesaving assistance from sympathy alone. He described the commission’s standards in terms of saving a life, accepting personal danger, and acting without reward, while recognizing that acts of help could be praiseworthy without meeting the threshold for the title. He rejected the idea that rescue was impossible, writing: “Under no circumstances can it be said that rescue was impossible.”[17]

His role placed a survivor and judge at the center of a process that weighed testimony and documentary evidence. The commission’s work required case-by-case assessment rather than recognition based on sympathy alone, and Bejski’s tenure spanned a quarter-century of such evaluations.[3][16]

Bejski’s connection to Schindler was especially close and also intersected with the question of recognition. He was one of the survivors whose rescue formed part of Schindler’s record, later served on the committee considering Schindler’s recognition, and defended Schindler against claims that his Nazi past made the rescue a simple case of changing sides. A report recounts Bejski’s view that such characterizations did Schindler an injustice.[1]

In testimony preserved by Yad Vashem, Bejski recalled meeting Schindler personally at Brünnlitz. He said Schindler remained with the prisoners until after SS guards had left on the night of 8 May 1945. Bejski also recounted that the survivors made Schindler a ring using gold teeth donated by a prisoner; after the first ring was lost in the postwar confusion, another was made and presented to him.[18]

Bejski’s article on Schindler brought together documents about the rescue of 1,200 Jews, including Bejski, in Kraków and Brünnlitz. The materials described in the catalog include Schindler’s speech to liberated prisoners at Brünnlitz on 8 May 1945, a letter from survivor leaders furnished to Schindler that day, and records of a reception in Schindler’s honor in Tel Aviv on 2 May 1962.[5]

The collection also includes Bejski’s eulogy at Schindler’s funeral in Jerusalem on 28 October 1974. These documents trace the relationship from the liberation of the prisoners through postwar public recognition and Bejski’s later work to preserve the record.[5]

A reconstruction of Schindler’s story reports that Bejski escorted him to Yad Vashem. While they checked files, they found an original bill of lading for a transport of prisoners from Golleschau. The account says Schindler had changed the destination written on the document from Svitavy to Brünnlitz, corroborating his recollections of the transport.[19]

Bejski also commented on the later film Schindler’s List. In his foreword, he said it was “not always consistent with the historical facts,” while arguing that it reconstructed the atmosphere of the Nazi camps and gave millions of viewers an opportunity to learn about the Holocaust.[5]

Bejski held several public positions connected with Jewish institutions and Holocaust education. In addition to chairing the Righteous commission, he served on Yad Vashem’s council and executive. He was president of the Zionist Organization’s supreme court and chaired Massuah, the Institute for Holocaust Studies, whose work focused on Zionist youth movements during the Holocaust and resistance.[1]

His presidency of the Zionist Supreme Court reflected a public career that extended beyond the Israeli judiciary and included legal, Zionist, and commemorative institutions.[1]

Bejski’s involvement in Jewish communal institutions began before his judicial appointments. After his return to Israel, he worked for HaOved HaTzioni and was active in Aliyah Bet; later, his responsibilities in Histadrut bodies and Zionist institutions brought legal work together with public and organizational service.[1]

His public work included judging and arbitration after retirement from the Supreme Court. A contemporary profile reports that he mainly provided legal opinions and conducted arbitrations after leaving the bench in 1991.[1]

In 1985 Bejski was appointed chairman of the state commission of inquiry into the regulation of bank shares, following the 1983 bank-share crisis. The commission was established in early 1985 to investigate the crisis through the October 1983 market collapse. Its members were selected for economic and legal expertise and for personal and intellectual independence.[4]

The commission included Bejski as chair, Marshall Sarnat, Jerusalem District Court Judge Verdi Zeiler, economics professor Zeev Hirsch, and law professor Daniel Friedman. It examined shortcomings in the banking system and in the work of the Bank of Israel, bank supervision, the Israel Securities Authority, and the Finance Ministry.[4]

A Ynet interview reports that Bejski was appointed in January 1985 at the request of then-Supreme Court President Meir Shamgar, about 15 months after the October 1983 crisis. The commission met for long hours each morning for roughly a year and a half, and its report ran to 500 pages. Bejski recalled that it contained about 18 personal recommendations against officials and several dozen structural recommendations intended to prevent a recurrence.[20]

The report recommended removing Bank of Israel Governor Moshe Mendelbaum. It also recommended that four commercial-bank chiefs—Ernest Yeftet of Bank Leumi, Ephraim Reiner of Bank Hapoalim, Raphael Recanati of Bank Discount, and Aharon Meir of Bank Mizrahi—not continue in their jobs or hold senior posts in the banking system. It recommended dismissing Bank Hapoalim chief executive Giora Gazit, but did not propose barring him entirely from future positions in the banking system.[4]

Among the structural proposals were separating banks from provident and mutual funds and addressing the multiple roles banks played as fund managers, investment advisers, brokers, and share traders. In Bejski’s recollection, the commission’s purpose was not to punish individuals but to prevent a recurrence of the crisis.[20]

The commission’s report was published in April 1986. Accounts differ on the number of people subsequently indicted: Ynet reports that indictments were filed in 1990 against 22 people, while a Globes account says 21 people were charged on the final day of that year, involving the four largest banks and their auditors.[20][4]

Bejski later expressed disappointment with the implementation of the commission’s proposals. In an interview, he said the structural recommendations had been carried out only in part and criticized the “Chinese walls” between banks and funds, arguing that fund officials remained dependent on banks for salaries and promotion. He believed that following the recommendations could have prevented the 1993 stock-market crisis.[20]

In a 2003 interview, Bejski said that after commissions of inquiry publish conclusions, “they put them in a drawer.” Later accounts, however, describe some longer-term influence: principles developed by his commission informed the work of the Bachar Committee, and the Knesset’s capital-market reform drew on ideas that committee had studied and absorbed from the Bejski recommendations. The records therefore describe both his frustration over incomplete implementation and a later policy legacy.[4]

Bejski died in 2007 at the age of 86. Yad Vashem identifies him as a Holocaust survivor and Israeli Supreme Court justice, and records his chairmanship of the Commission for the Designation of the Righteous from 1970 to 1995.[1][10]

His legacy rests on several connected forms of service: a long judicial career, public inquiry into the bank-share crisis, and sustained involvement in Holocaust commemoration. His testimony at the Eichmann trial and in later interviews conveyed the experiences of Płaszów prisoners.[7] His work at Yad Vashem helped assess cases of rescue according to explicit standards of danger, lifesaving action, and lack of reward.[3][17]

Bejski’s own survival shaped his relationship with Schindler and with the record of rescue. He preserved and discussed documents related to the rescue, testified about the survivors’ experience, and defended the significance of Schindler’s actions. His account of the survivors’ ring, his funeral eulogy, and his writing about Schindler’s List form part of that documented record.[5][18]

His career also crossed legal and communal settings: he taught law, served in the Israeli judiciary, held positions in Zionist and Holocaust-education institutions, and chaired an inquiry whose recommendations later influenced some capital-market reforms. Together, these roles made him a public figure whose work joined legal judgment, Jewish institutional life, and Holocaust remembrance.[1][4]

Bejski’s foreword to the Działoszyce memorial book includes allegations about postwar violence against returning Jews and the destruction of the cemetery, attributed to local Polish residents. These are presented as claims made in his account. Separately, accounts of the bank-share affair differ on whether 21 or 22 people were indicted or charged, and descriptions of the commission’s impact distinguish Bejski’s criticism of incomplete implementation from the later influence attributed to some of its recommendations.[6][20][4]