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Murray S. Greenfield is an American-born Israeli writer and publisher. He spent more than a decade researching his best-known book, The Jews’ Secret Fleet, about the participation of North American sailors in Aliyah Bet. We met in Tel Aviv at the AACI office and he spoke about the early days of the founding of the State.
Murray Greenfield
He was himself just such a volunteer participant. The so called illegal vessels brought over 50% of the Holocaust survivors from the displaced persons camp to Palestine. The British gave up the British Mandate of Palestine and the United Nations voted for a Jewish State. In Israel, Greenfield began working in Haifa, seeking foreign investors to place capital in the
Palestinian Economic Corporation. In the early days of Israel’s existence, most philanthropists’ only thought of donating charity to poverty-stricken immigrants. Greenfield later settled in Tel Aviv with his newfound bride Hana Lustig. He was one of the founding members of the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel (AACI), where he later became executive director. Under his directorship, the AACI flourished; Greenfield pioneered and established loan funds, a mortgage company and a variety of housing projects in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Kibbutzim. He was always involved in public service, but the cause that he dedicated the most time to was rescuing Ethiopian Jewry; he was the volunteer director for seven years of the American Association for Ethiopian Jewry [AAEJ]. In the midst of his endeavors, Greenfield published a book with his wife titled, How to be an Oleh or Things the Jewish Agency Never Told You. He founded and contributed editorially to the first ever English language magazine titled FrontPage, and later a monthly magazine titled Rossvet, for Russian immigrants. Hana, a Holocaust survivor, has written the book Fragments of Memory, which is published in six languages. Together they founded the Czech Torah Network. In 1981, Greenfield established Gefen Publishing House, later taken over by his two sons Dror and Ilan. After Dror’s passing in 2003, Ilan continued to run the company. Today, Gefen publishes up to 35 titles a year and is the English language publisher in Israel. In 2008 a new documentary film directed by Alan Rosenthal was released entitled “Waves of Freedom”, which features Murray Greenfield. Alan Rosenthal was inspired to creating the documentary after reading the book by Murray Greenfield called “The Jews’ Secret Fleet”. The book has an introduction by Sir Martin Gilbert. Hana and Murray Greenfield have three children, Meira, Dror and Ilan and ten grandchildren, all of whom reside in Israel.
Murray Greenfield
