Yehudah Arazi - Biography

Biography

Arazi was born in Lodz in 1907. He immigrated with his parents to Tel Aviv in 1924, studying in the Gymnasia Herzlia. While in Palestine, Arazi joined the Haganah and the Palestine Police Force. As a police officer, he was most notably involved as the investigating officer in the 1933 murder of Chaim Arlosoroff. In 1936, Arazi was sent back to Poland to help smuggle matériel to Palestine. In 1931 he married Rivka Albin, a year later there daughter Ruth was born. She married in 1955 the supreme court judge Gabriel Bach. During the war in 1941 his son Dan was born.

In 1943 he "confiscated" 5,000 rifles from the British Police for the Haganah and had to go into hiding. From 1945 to 1948 he was in the Mossad LeAliyah Bet, commander of the Italy “station” and involved in the “La Spezia” affair. In 1959, just before he died he befriended the artist Chaim Goldberg, also a Polish Jew, who was commissioned to execute several sculptures and a fully functional water fountain for the front of his hotel. The artist established his studio in a former munitions factory that he received from Arazi, that was located behind the hotel. Shortly thereafter he was diagnosed with a brain tumour and died.

After the independence of Israel in 1948, Arazi became a private businessman and built the Ramat Aviv Hotel. He died in 1959.

Arazi and the La Spezia affair gave the inspiration to Leon Uris for Ari Ben Canaan in Exodus. Arazi was known as “King of Ruses” changing disguises and characters according to needs.