Autor/-in: Yakov Adler

Yakov Adler (Ya'akov in Hebrew), known as "Jacques" in the resistance, was born on 30 December 1911 in Nuremberg, Germany, to a religious Jewish family. He was the only surviving child of David and Bertha Adler, who ran a tailor shop in the city. In 1930 he began studying medicine at the University of Erlangen, but as conditions for Jews worsened he continued his studies in Zurich, Strasbourg, and finally Paris. When the Nazis took power in 1933, his parents moved to Holland, and Yakov later joined them there. He earned his PhD in 1937 and his Dutch medical certificate in 1939, interning at the Dutch Israelite Hospital and later specializing in pediatrics in Arnhem. It was there he met Betsy "Beckel" de Leeuw, a nurse; they fell in love and married in August 1942. A Nazi raid struck Amsterdam on their very wedding day. Forced into hiding, they moved from place to place with help from the Dutch underground, concealed in cupboards and small villages, where their first daughter, Jacqueline (Yael), was born. After the war the family settled in Steenwijk, where a second daughter, Yemima, arrived in 1946. Yakov's Zionist convictions had deepened during the war, and he began planning their emigration to Israel. Anticipating the tuberculosis that afflicted many camp survivors, he specialized in the disease, and a third daughter, Yocheved, was born in 1947. The family reached Israel in 1949, where Yakov worked at the tuberculosis hospital in Be'er Ya'akov, eventually serving as department head and deputy director until his retirement. Beyond medicine, Yakov was warm, sociable, and endlessly curious - a Rotary member who loved travel, classical music, history, archaeology, art, and literature, and who could talk with anyone about almost anything. He died in 2007 at the age of 95, surrounded by his wife, three daughters, three sons-in-law, nine grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren. His wife Batya passed away in 2012 at the age of 99.