Moshe Sanbar

Moshe Sanbar was born in 1926 in Kecskemét, Hungary, to Shlomo and Miriam Zandberg, the middle of their three sons.[3] His community in Kecskemét was highly assimilated, and he and his peers initially considered themselves entirely Hungarian.[3] The rise of antisemitism, however, prompted them to identify more strongly as Jews, and they began studying Hebrew, though they knew little of Zionism or the Land of Israel at the time.[3]

When Germany invaded Hungary in March 1944, the family's world collapsed. SS personnel seized Sanbar's father, Shlomo.[3] Sanbar escaped from a forced labor site at a synagogue after his father urged him to flee and look after his mother — it was the last time the two saw each other.[3] Both Shlomo and Miriam were subsequently deported to Auschwitz and murdered.[3]

At eighteen, following the establishment of the Kecskemét ghetto in late May 1944, Sanbar was conscripted into the Hungarian army's labor battalions, where he performed hard labor under brutal conditions.[3] After Hungarian fascists under Ferenc Szálasi seized power, he and other prisoners were marched hundreds of kilometers westward toward Austria, handed over to German forces, and transported first to Dachau and then to the Mühldorf camp.[3] In April 1945 he was loaded onto a severely overcrowded train in which dozens of prisoners died from suffocation and hunger before United States forces stopped and liberated it.[3] He was extremely emaciated at liberation, and some prisoners initially ate grass in disbelief that rescue had come.[3]

Sanbar arrived in Eretz Israel in March 1948, in the midst of the War of Independence.[4] After brief military training he was sent to the Latrun front, where he was seriously wounded.[4] Following his release from the Israel Defense Forces in 1949, he enrolled at the Hebrew University, where he studied economics, statistics, and sociology.[1][4]

From 1951 to 1958 Sanbar served as project director and then deputy director of the Israel Institute of Applied Social Research.[1] He entered the civil service in 1958 and held a succession of senior Treasury positions, including director of research, deputy director of state revenues, director of budgets, and economic adviser.[1] During that period he also advised Finance Ministers Pinhas Sapir and Levi Eshkol.[6]

In 1968 Sanbar became deputy chairman of the Israel Development Bank Ltd.'s board, and from 1970 to 1971 he served as its chairman.[1] Concurrently, during 1969–1971 he was chief economic adviser to the minister of finance. Sources differ on the title of his 1970–1971 commerce and industry role: Encyclopaedia Judaica describes him as acting deputy minister, while the Bank of Israel identifies him as acting minister.[1][2]

In 1971 Sanbar succeeded David Horowitz as Governor of the Bank of Israel, a post he held until 1976.[1][2] In that capacity he represented Israel at the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Development Association, and the International Finance Corporation, and the government appointed him chairman of the Economic Development and Refugee Rehabilitation Trust.[1] A 1976 archival photograph documents a meeting between Sanbar, then governor of the Bank of Israel, and Israeli industrialists.[7]

After leaving the governorship, Sanbar sat on the boards of numerous Israeli companies and institutions.[6] He chaired Bank Leumi and served as chairman of Tel Aviv's Habima Theater.[6] He was also president of the International Chamber of Commerce in Israel, a member of the World Trade Institute, and was consulted on United Nations departmental budgets.[4] He was one of sixteen Israeli experts and thinkers interviewed for Israel's New Future; his contribution, “More Impulses for Economic Growth,” addressed the country's economic prospects.[8]

Sanbar devoted a large part of his later public life to representing Holocaust survivors. He was one of the founders of the Centre of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel — established to serve as an umbrella body — and chaired the organization until his death.[4][6] In that role he represented an organization described at different points as uniting twenty-nine to forty survivor groups and some 300,000 survivors across Israel.[9][1]

When the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims (ICHEIC) was established in 1998 to address unpaid insurance policies issued to Holocaust victims, Sanbar served as one of its commissioners.[5] Together with Roman Kent, he represented survivor organizations alongside U.S. insurance regulators and the State of Israel in the commission's formation.[9] During that process he reported developments to leaders of Israeli survivor groups, solicited their suggestions, and ensured those views were communicated to their constituencies.[9] Sanbar described the insurance restitution effort as an intricate and complex enterprise.[5]

Sanbar also chaired the board of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany and was a member of the Yad Vashem Council.[4] At a 2005 U.S. Department of State address to the Claims Conference, he was acknowledged alongside Israel Singer, Julius Berman, Roman Kent, and Gideon Taylor for his leadership of the organization.[10]

Sanbar published widely across both economics and personal testimony. He wrote numerous articles and research studies on income policy, taxation, budget policy, and central banking.[1] He edited Economic and Social Policy in Israel: The First Generation, published by University Press of America in Lanham, Maryland, with a foreword by Daniel J. Elazar.[11]

His Holocaust memoir was published in Hebrew as שנה לאין קץ (A Year Without End) and in English as My Longest Year, describing his experiences under German occupation in Hungary.[1][3] First published in 1966, it appeared in an adapted easy-Hebrew edition in 1968 and was reissued in a second edition in 1991.[3] The book was awarded the Yad Vashem Prize in 1967.[1]

Moshe Sanbar died in Tel Aviv in 2012 at the age of 86, survived by his wife Bracha, two daughters, and six grandchildren.[3][6] Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev said that Sanbar symbolized Holocaust survivors' ability not only to return to life but to actively shape Israeli society, including its economy.[4] Shalev also described him as one of the first survivors to write a memorial book sharing his personal story with younger generations.[4]

Sanbar himself articulated the broader stakes of Holocaust memory. He argued that remembrance carried universal applications — opposing racism and all forms of oppression based on ethnic background, skin color, or religion, and resisting the principle that the end justifies the means.[12] He also described a survivors' conference as a final opportunity for his generation to communicate its message to future generations.[12] His life traced a remarkable arc: from a Hungarian teenager imprisoned in Dachau and Mühldorf, to a wounded soldier in Israel's War of Independence, to the governor of a central bank and a leading voice for survivors seeking justice from European insurers.