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Abstract

Moshe Prager was an exceptional figure in Israeli society from 1940
to his death in 1984. Prager was a Haredi writer, journalist, and
historian who had a significant role in embedding and commemorating
the memory of the Holocaust in Israeli society overall, and in Haredi
society in particular. His role in bridging the gap between Israel’s
Haredi and secular worlds also earned him a substantial place in Israeli
social history. Soon after his arrival in Eretz Israel, Prager became
an authority among the Yishuv – and later among the State of Israel’s
leaders – on matters pertaining to both the extermination of European
Jewry and the formation of the consciousness of spiritual valor in the
collective Haredi memory in Israel. Yet Prager remains unknown to
most of the Israeli public and is scarcely mentioned by historians.

Moshe Mark was born in Warsaw’s Praga suburb in 1909, and later,
as an act of commemoration he changed his family name into Prager. His
ancestors were scions of the Ger Dynasty. From a young age, he was an
activist and a multilingual journalist who published numerous opinion
columns in Jewish newspapers. With the German invasion of Poland in
1939, Prager felt the need to alert the Jewish world to the goings-on in
Poland, and with the help of the American Joint Distribution Committee,
he established a secret office tasked with documenting these events. In
1940, he was involved in secretly bringing the Rebbe of Ger to Eretz
Israel, with Prager himself joining the entourage and leaving his wife
and family behind (he intended to have them come shortly afterwards,
but this failed, and they were later murdered).

Upon his arrival, Prager began lecturing on the terrors of the Nazi
regime in Poland. His first book, Yeven Mezulah Hahadash, published
in Hebrew in 1941, left a deep mark on readers.