Israeli-Czech Holocaust survivor Avraham Harshalom dies at 99

Avraham Harshalom, an Israeli-Czech Holocaust survivor and former president of the Israeli Society of Friends of the Czech Republic, has died at the age of 99, the Czech embassy in Israel announced on social media site X. Although born in present-day Belarus, he ended up in Prague in March 1945 after escaping from a transport from Buchenwald and was hidden by a Czech family for the remaining two months of the war. He participated in the Prague Uprising in May 1945, obtained Czechoslovak nationality, and studied at the Czech Technical University in Prague after the war. He moved to Israel in 1949 and lived there until his death. He received the Gratias Agit Award in 2016 from the Czech Foreign Ministry for his active involvement in the restoration of relations between the two countries.