The cabinet has named former Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau as the new chairman of the council of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial. Lau, 71, is a Holocaust survivor who went on to become a respected and influential rabbi in Israel. He will succeed the late Joseph (Tommy) Lapid as head of the advisory board. The Polish-born Lau's family was sent to the Treblinka extermination camp, where they were murdered. He escaped the deportation and ended up at in a forced labor camp. He was liberated from the Buchenwald concentration camp with the defeat of Germany. After the war, he emigrated to Palestine on a ship of orphaned refugee children. He served as chief rabbi of Israel between 1993-2003 and is now the chief rabbi of Tel Aviv.
