Jakob Edelstein
Jakob Edelstein (AKA Yacov, Yaakov, Jakub Edelstein or Edlstein; 25 July 1903 – 20 June 1944) was a Czechoslovak Zionist, social democrat and the first Jewish Elder in the Theresienstadt ghetto. He was murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Life and work Jakob Edelstein was born into a devout Ashkenazi family in Horodenka at that time in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, nowadays in the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, Ukraine. His parents were Motl and Mattil Edelstein, he had a sister called Dora. During World War I, the family fled Horodenka in 1915 to Brno in Moravia to avoid the Russian army, that organised a pogrom against the Jewish people of the town, nine Jews were hanged in the main street of Horodenka. When his family returned after the war to Horodenka, Jakob stayed in Brno to finish his studies at a business school. After his graduation he left Brno for Teplitz in northern Bohemia to work as a traveling salesman. Edelstein became a fierce member of the Poale Zion movement and an activist in the Social Democrat Party. In 1927 he left the Party and was for two years only active in the Přátelé přírody, a (social democrat movement of nature friends). From 1926 Edelstein was