Painting

Hillel Storch (also Hilel or Gilel, 1902-1983) was born on May 24, 1902 in Dvinsk, Vitebsk Governorate (now Daugavpils, Latvia). He participated in the Zionist movement and became a representative of the Jewish Agency at age 18. He moved to Riga to work as an export merchant. When the Soviet Union occupied Latvia in 1940, Storch fled to Stockholm. His wife Ania and daughter Eleonora rejoined him in May 1941 as part of an agent exchange between Sweden and the Soviet Union. In Sweden, Storch represented the Jewish Agency and the World Jewish Congress. He worked with the Stockholm Chief Rabbi Mordechai Ehrenpreis and other leading personalities in Sweden to find ways to save Jews from the Nazis. In 1944 he and the Jewish Agency helped bring Jews from “mixed marriages” to Sweden. In February 1945, Count Folke Bernadotte informed Storch that Swiss diplomats had arranged for several thousand Jews to be released from Germany to enter Switzerland, and that the Germans would consider releasing more. Heinrich Himmler's personal physician, Felix Kersten, sent an invitation from Himmler to Storch to come to Berlin to negotiate. As Storch was not a Swedish citizen, he could not expect Swedish protection abroad, so Norbert Masur went in his place. These so-called “White Buses” operations rescued hundreds of Jews from Neuengamme, Theresienstadt, and Ravensbrück. Storch died on April 25, 1983 in Stockholm. Many of his and his wife’s relatives were murdered in the Holocaust.