Hebrew-Name
גיזלה רייפן (גילה מאור)
Biography
Gila Maor (née Gisela Reifen) was born in 1913 in Plauen, Germany and died in Israel (year unknown). She was raised in a Hassidic family and managed to leave for Palestine in June of 1933, just a few hours before the Gestapo came looking for her. Her parents and siblings were supposed to follow her soon thereafter, but the family was murdered in the Holocaust. Only one of her relatives, David Reifen, immigrated to Palestine and worked the area of youth law and welfare. Gila married Harry Maor, originally from Munich, in 1939. He was a teacher of religion and worked as social worker in Haifa for a short period. Like her husband, Gila frequented cafes for left-leaning intellectuals. In 1942, the couple moved to Tel Aviv, where they had two children, Eleanor, named after Karl Marx's daughter, and Maimon, named after Harry's younger brother, who had remained in Germany and died in the Holocaust. In the 1950s, the family returned to live in Germany to enable Harry to obtain his PhD. Harry led the Zentralwohlfahrtsstelle der Juden in Deutschland (ZWST) in Berlin and Gila worked in anthroposophist kindergartens and as a child caregiver for Jewish-German families. After Harry’s death, Gila, together with psychologists and therapists, founded the group Lavav for single adults coping with mental disabilities and seeking partners in life.