Levi-Altman, Margot (born Altman)

Hebrew-Name
מרגוט לוי-אלטמן
Biography
Margot Levi-Altman was born on 5.11.1902 in Poland and died in 1956 in Israel. The Altman family lived in Breslau in a large five-room apartment and led a bourgeois, non-religious Jewish life. Margot was a good student and the only one of her siblings who studied in a Gymnasium, passing her matriculation exams in 1921. She had a strong command of classical German literature and knew hundreds of poems by heart. She also wrote her own poetry and stories, and was an accomplished musician, playing flute and guitar. Margot was a member of the Kameraden, a Jewish youth movement. After completing her matriculation exams, she studied at a teacher training seminary and was certified as a teacher in 1923. She never worked within a formal school structure, but instead began to educate children of Jewish families privately. During the second half of the 1920s, she moved to Munich, where she studied child psychology and psychotherapy, and later worked as a therapist at the Hecksher Hospital and Research Institute. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, she was dismissed from her job, at which point, the Zionist chapter in her life began. She moved to Berlin, was hired by the Jewish orphanage Ahawa and immigrated to Israel in 1935, where she worked as a youth group leader at Kibbutz Givat Brenner. One year later, she moved to Jerusalem and began working at the Irene Gaster Children's Institute. In the summer of 1937, she met Dr. Mordechai Levi, whom she married. Her young family moved to live in the "small house" between the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Arnona and Ramat Rachel in 1941. Margot worked in the nearby children’s center Armon Yeladim (children palace), caring for children in the community. She also founded the B'nai B'rith Institute for the Children from Teheran. In 1944 the family moved to Haifa and Mrgot worked at Hadassah's counseling and therapy center in Hadar Hacarmel. In 1951, she stopped working at Hadassah and worked in private practice.
Mother
Laura Altman (born Spitz)
Father
Albert Altman, a textile salesman
Marriage/Children
Was married to Dr. Mordechai Levi
Age at Migration
33
Year of Migration
1935
Networks