Ezriel Carlebach

Ezriel Carlebach was the son of Gertrud and Ephraim Carlebach. He was born in Leipzig in 1908 and had five siblings. Thanks to his well-known family and his own career, his life story is well documented, and information about him is preserved in several archives.

As a young man, Ezriel Carlebach first trained as a rabbi and then earned a doctorate in law. From then on, however, his passion lay in journalism and literature. In 1931, he received an award from the “Deutsche Buchwerkstätten” in Leipzig for his novel “Mit 21 …”. As a critical journalist and a Jew, he was persecuted by the Nazis from an early stage. Carlebach was living in Berlin at the time and reported on the growing influence of the NSDAP in German society. In 1933, his writings—along with other critical or politically nonconformist works by other authors—were burned at Opernplatz in Berlin. This Nazi interference in press freedom is known as the book burning.

Knowing that he now faced a long prison sentence or even harsher punishment, Carlebach fled Berlin. While in exile in Poland and, from 1935 onward, in Britain, he continued to work as a journalist. In 1937, Carlebach emigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine. As a co-founder and editor-in-chief of the newspaper Ma’ariv, he was considered one of Israel’s most prominent journalists. Among other things, he maintained contact with Albert Einstein: in 1952, they exchanged views on Israel’s political development. Dr. Ezriel Carlebach died of heart failure in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 1956.