Shevah Weiss

Shevah Weiss was born on July 5, 1935, in Borysław, a city then situated in southeastern Poland and now the Ukrainian city of Boryslav, to Gienia and Meir Wolf.[2] His original given name was "Shayebakh"; after immigrating to Israel, he adopted the Hebrew form "Shevah" as he sought to embrace the identity of the native-born sabra.[5]

When the Holocaust reached Borysław, Weiss's father prepared a concealed space no more than about half a meter wide between the family's store and warehouse, where the family remained hidden for approximately six months.[3] The conditions were extreme: family members subsisted on one slice of dry, shriveled black bread per day, drank impure water, and could hear gunshots as Jewish men and women were led into the surrounding woods. Weiss recalled seeing his aunt and her children among those being marched away.[3] The family also hid in a damp kindergarten cellar, from which Weiss witnessed the Red Army's entry into the city in the autumn of 1944.[3] Decades later, he described his survival as "truly a miracle" and remembered the neighbors who helped him as a six-year-old as "ordinary yet heroic people."[1]

The Polish and Ukrainian rescuers who concealed the Weiss family were subsequently recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.[2] After liberation, the family moved through several locations across Europe before arriving in British Mandate Palestine in 1947, two weeks after the United Nations vote of November 29, as part of the Youth Aliyah framework.[5]

Weiss spent his first years in the country at the Hadassim youth village, where he was a student and later a counselor.[5] He served in the Israeli army and worked early in his career as a quiz-master, including at Voice of Israel Radio—Kol Yisrael—where his facility with knowledge and language first brought him public recognition.[2]

Weiss pursued higher education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, earning a bachelor's degree in International Relations.[2] He continued there for postgraduate study, completing a master's degree in local-government studies and a doctorate in political science.[3] His scholarly interests also encompassed Contemporary Jewish Studies. Over his career, he authored more than twenty books covering political science, local government, the Knesset, the Holocaust, and quiz-related subjects, as well as books for children and young people.[3][6]

He joined the University of Haifa's Department of Political Science, where he lectured and researched Israel's systems of political power at the local and national levels.[2][6] His academic work placed him at the intersection of Israeli democratic institutions and Jewish historical memory, two themes that also defined his public life. He additionally wrote books in Polish on Holocaust subjects and personal memories.[6]

Weiss entered municipal politics in Haifa, serving on the city council from 1969 to 1981.[2] In 1981, he was elected to the Knesset as a member of the Alignment and later Labor, remaining a member until 1999.[3][6] During those years, he served on several parliamentary committees, including the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, and was a deputy speaker from 1988 to 1992.[2][6]

On July 13, 1992, Weiss was elected Speaker of the 13th Knesset, a position he held until June 24, 1996.[7][3] The Speaker, assisted by the deputy speakers, presides over plenary sittings and helps determine the parliamentary order of business.[7] Weiss's tenure coincided with the governments of Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres.[6]

Weiss was a close associate of Prime Minister Rabin. He accompanied Rabin to the signing of the peace agreement in Washington and to the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo.[5] On November 4, 1995, Weiss stood on stage at a major peace rally in Tel Aviv alongside Rabin and Shimon Peres. At the close of the event, the gathering sang "Song for Peace." Rabin descended from the stage afterward and was shot and killed by Yigal Amir.[8] The event left a permanent mark on Weiss, who returned to it repeatedly in later interviews.

In the 1999 Knesset election, Weiss secured a low position on the Labor Party slate and did not win a seat, ending his parliamentary career.[8] He later said that he missed the Knesset "to the point of pain," describing it as far more than a workplace and recalling that he would arrive with the cleaning staff in the early morning and leave late at night.[5]

Following his departure from the Knesset, Weiss was appointed Israel's ambassador to Poland, serving from 2000 to 2004.[2] The posting carried deep personal resonance for a Holocaust survivor born in prewar Poland, and Weiss worked to strengthen relations between Israel and Poland.[1]

After his diplomatic service, Weiss headed a chair devoted to Israel Studies and Jewish history at the University of Warsaw.[5] Yad Vashem credited him with significant contributions to cooperation between Poland and Israel.[2]

His diplomatic work was recognized with several Polish honors. In 2002, he received Poland's Government Prize for Tolerance. Ynet reports that he received the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest honor, in 2003, while the World Jewish Congress reports that President Andrzej Duda decorated him with that order in 2017.[1][6] On January 4, 2004, President Aleksander Kwaśniewski awarded him the Grand Cross, First Class, of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland for his contributions to Polish-Israeli cooperation.[2] That year, he also received the Yakir Haifa award for his work on behalf of Haifa and Israel, Holocaust remembrance, and his representation of Israel in Poland.[2]

In 2000, concurrent with his ambassadorial role, Weiss became Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council, a position he held for about seven years.[2] On his retirement, Yad Vashem Directorate Chairman Avner Shalev thanked him publicly for his dedication and energy in the service of Holocaust commemoration.[2] In January 2005, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom invited Weiss to participate in Israel's official delegation to the United Nations General Assembly's special session marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camps, recognizing his standing as both a Holocaust survivor and a former Knesset Speaker.[9]

Weiss also endorsed Moshe Arens's historical study Flags over the Warsaw Ghetto, calling it "an outstanding study," reflecting his sustained engagement with the history of Jewish resistance and suffering during the Second World War.[10]

Shevah Weiss died on February 3, 2023, at the age of 87.[2] He was buried in the Plot of the Greats of the Nation on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.[4] At the graveside, his daughter described the burial place as "the complete opposite of the pit where he hid during the Holocaust," linking the site to the arc of his life.[4]

He was survived by two children and a grandchild. He had been married to Dr. Esther Weiss until her death in 2005.[8]

Weiss's life reflected the experience of a generation of Jewish survivors who rebuilt their lives in the State of Israel and transformed personal catastrophe into public service. A National Library of Israel record identifies him, as Knesset Speaker, among hundreds of mourners at Ofira Navon's funeral alongside Israel's sitting president and prime minister and two former presidents.[11] His presence beside Rabin at the November 1995 peace rally similarly placed him at one of the defining moments of modern Israeli history.[1]

His academic writing on political science, local governance, the Knesset, and Holocaust memory, together with his books for children and young people, left a body of work intended to transmit political and historical knowledge across generations.[3][6] His later leadership of a chair at the University of Warsaw extended that educational work beyond Israel.[5]

Through his ambassadorship and the honors he received from Poland, Weiss played a documented role in strengthening relations between Israel and Poland while remaining closely engaged with Holocaust commemoration.[1][2]

In 1988, Weiss formed an alliance in the Knesset with Yossi Sarid of the Citizens' Rights Movement to oppose a government plan under which Soviet Jews would receive Israeli visas only through the Israeli embassy in Bucharest.[12] Their position, characterized at the time as grounded in "humane Jewish values," held that Israel should help Jews leave the Soviet Union regardless of whether they intended to settle in Israel or elsewhere. Natan Sharansky and Ida Nudel supported the position, while Likud members Uzi Landau and Ronni Milo argued that a Zionist state had no obligation to facilitate emigration from one exile to another. The contemporary press review reported that only five percent of Jews leaving the Soviet Union on Israeli visas were coming to Israel.[12]

Weiss also offered politically and historically sensitive interpretations of Polish attitudes toward Jews. In an interview quoted by Maariv, he suggested that Polish admiration for him partly reflected a measure of remorse connected to wartime history, postwar anti-Jewish violence, and Poland's later severing of relations with Israel. These comments represented Weiss's personal interpretation rather than an independently established historical conclusion.[5]