Leni Yahil

Leni Yahil (1912–2007), née Leni Westphal, was a German-born Israeli historian, specializing in the Holocaust and Danish Jewry. Early life Leni was born in Düsseldorf, Germany, in 1912, and was raised in Potsdam, Germany. She was a sixth-generation descent of Moses Mendelssohn's family, as well as a granddaughter of James Simon. Her father, Ernst Westphal, was a judge. Yahil studied history at the universities of Munich and Berlin. Afterwards, she was accepted into the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (College of Judaic Studies) in Berlin, but had her education interrupted by the Nazi rise to power in Germany in 1933. She joined a Jewish youth movement called Werkleute (Workmen) and eventually became one of its leaders. She immigrated to Palestine in 1934, and was eventually able to resume her college education by studying at the Hebrew University, where she majored in general history, with a dual minor in Jewish history and Hebrew literature. She received her master's degree in 1940, with her thesis being about “The Concept of Democracy in Tocqueville.” In 1942, Leni married Chaim Hoffman (later Yahil; 1905–1974), later having two sons with him – Amos (born 1943) and Jonathan (1945–1967). Academic career and later life After her studies, Yahil engaged in various cultural, political and journalistic activities (1940–1947, 1949–1953) in the labor movement and the women’s section of the Histadrut (Israeli labor federation), and in various positions at Davar (the Histadrut’s daily newspaper). At one point, Yahil also edited the English-language monthly newspaper, News from Israel. Between 1954 and 1956, Yahil "served as academic secretary to her university teacher Professor Benzion Dinur, Israel’s first Minister of Education and Culture (1951–1955). Yahil submitted her doctoral dissertation, The Jews of Denmark During the Holocaust, to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1964, getting her PhD one year later.