JosephHarmatz
From Nazi avenger to visionary educationalist
APARTISAN DURING the Second World War, Joseph (Julik) Harmatz who has died i n T e l Aviv, aged 91, employed his fighting spirit to lead World ORT through a pivotal moment in its history. He committed decades to the mission, but his membership of Nakam (Revenge), a group of some 50 partisans led by the Israeli poet Aba Kovner, courted public controversy in 1946 when they sought to punish top level Nazi perpetrators who had escaped justice at the Nuremberg trials. They first contaminated the bread at a German bakery supplying a detention centre for former SS men, and then poisoned the water supply of five German cities. Both plots failed. Whether any Nazis died is unknown, but for 50 years Harmatz remained silent about his role, finally publishing his story in a book
(1998). He told he intended to “kill six million Germans, one for every Jew slaughtered.”
From his role as an audacious avenger, Harmatz became the committed visionary whose achievements with ORT spanned 33 years, and benefited thousands. In Israel and later in London as Director General of World ORT, Harmatz proved a man of vision, enthusiasm and practical application, leading an innovative staff dedicated to excellence in education for people of all levels of ability. He was described by the Rt Hon Lord Young of Graffham, former President of World ORT as “one of the heroes of the resistance in Lithu- ania” and “an inspiration.”
Harmatz was born in Rokiškis, Lithuania, in 1925. His parents Avraham and Devorah had a successful wholesale business supplying local farmers and shopkeeperswithequipmentandfoodstuffs. He graduated in Law and Economics from the Hebrew University, and married Gina Kirschenfeld, whom he had met in Israel in 1950.
During his 13 years as Director General of the World ORT Union, Harmatz was consulted by numerous Education Secretaries on establishing vocational schools in the UK. He was an adviser to UNESCO, sat on various UN committees, and expanded World ORT’s operations in the developing world. In China Harmatz counselled on the revival of small local communities and in Germany he consulted on overseas aid projects.
Harmatz established World ORT’s Academic Advisory Council, an international group of prominent scholars monitoring educational trends who helped determine World ORT’s educational strategy. Its membership included Oxford philosopher and historian Sir Isaiah Berlin, and biophysicist Professor Ephraim Katzir, Israel’s fourth president. He also set up ORT’s network in the Americas and Europe, including the creation of an effective technical department, and the foundation of ORT’s Braude International College of Technology in Karmiel. The Harmatz School of Engineering in Jerusalem was inaugurated under his watch.
Recognising the potential of glasnost and perestroika, he sought out influential individuals to help restore ORT’s presence in the region more than 50 years after Stalin had snuffed it out.
In early 1989 he met a dynamic young scientist, Professor Alexei Semenov of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, (Semenov is now a member of World ORT’s Board of Trustees) who headed a Moscow high-tech institute at the time.
A few months later, Harmatz was in Moscow as the guest of Professor Velichov, Vice-President of the Academy of Sciences. He toured schools in Moscow and Leningrad and within a year, World ORT had formally agreed to set up resource centres in major cities equipped with ORT systems, and began training teachers. He also secured a partnership with IBM, which had just signed an agreement with President Gorbachev to supply the Russian education system with 50,000 computers.
The centres paved the way for the establishment of World ORT’s current education network in the region, serving more than 27,000 students annually through 17 schools.
ORT’s return to Russia was an emotional one since Moscow’s World ORT office had ceased to exist with the disappearance of its director, Jacob Tzigelnizki in 1938. But it proved a milestone in ORT’s history. “We helped to introduce technology education on a wide scale, and at the same time — reach and teach the Jewish people, who did not at that stage exist as communities,” he wrote in his book
Harmatz’s passing marks a generational shift in World ORT’s history, the last of the larger-than-life characters whoshapedtheorganisationastheJewish people emerged from the horrors of genocide into the era of self-determination. At every school opening he remembered the teachers and students killed in the Holocaust, with a prayer in theirname.Ginapredeceasedhim.Heis survived by his sons Ronny and Zvi and several grandchildren Born January 23, 1925. Died September 22, 2016