Background
Leah Rabin was born on April 28, 1928, in Königsberg, East Prussia, Germany (currently the territory of Kaliningrad, Russian Federation). She was a daughter of a textile manufacturer.
1968
Leah and Yitzhak Rabin, then Israel's ambassador to the United States, in 1968.
(From left to right) Hillary Clinton, Queen Noor, Leah Rabin, and Leah Weizmann at a Ceremony after the Signing of the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty in The Arava, 1994.
Leah Rabin
Leah Rabin was born on April 28, 1928, in Königsberg, East Prussia, Germany (currently the territory of Kaliningrad, Russian Federation). She was a daughter of a textile manufacturer.
Leah Rabin’s family relocated to Koenigsberg, Germany (now Kaliningrad, Russian Federation) in 1933 soon after Adolf Hitler became a Chancellor of Germany.
Rabin was raised in Tel Aviv where she received her secondary education in a high school. After graduating in 1944, she pursued her studies at teachers' college with a brief pause for the work on propaganda in the Palmach.
Leah Rabin stood by the side of her husband, Yitzhak Rabin, throughout his military, diplomatic, and political careers. She was his wife as he became a hero of Israel’s 1967 Six-Day War, as he served as Israel’s ambassador to the United States during the administration of the American President Richard Nixon, and as he became the Prime Minister of Israel in 1974. She was the First Lady of Israel till 1977 when Rabin felt had to resign from his office because of the Dollar Account affair.
Yitzhak Rabin remained active in the leadership of Israel’s Labor Party, however, and made a triumphant return to the office of Prime Minister in 1992. In this position, he made substantial progress in gaining peace between Israel and the Palestinians, but his term was cut short by an assassin’s bullet late in 1995.
Since her husband’s death, Leah Rabin has been outspoken both about carrying on her husband’s goals for peace between Israelis and Palestinians and about the politicians in Israel’s Likud Party who oppose these goals. Mrs. Rabin discussed these issues, as well as her forty-eight-year marriage to the late Prime Minister, in her 1997 volume of memoirs, ‘Rabin: Our Life, His Legacy’. The critical reactions to the volume were mixed.
Leah Rabin pursued her public activity till the end of her life even after being diagnosed with lung cancer in the late 1990s.
Leah Rabin was a supporter of Shimon Peres during the Israeli general elections of 1996. Three years later, she stood for Ehud Barak. However, when he was on the office, she changed her opinions mainly because he was against a territorial compromise in Jerusalem.
Leah Rabin was an intelligent and forthright person of a strong will.
Physical Characteristics: At the end of the 1990s, Leah Rabin was diagnosed with lung cancer.
Leah Rabin married Yitzhak Rabin on August 23, 1948. The family produced two children named Dalja and Yuval.
Dalja was involved in the activity of the Centre Party, New Way as its Knesset member, and was active in the Labour Party as Deputy Minister of Defense.
A granddaughter of Yitzhak and Leah Rabin, Noa Ben Artzi-Pelossof, also wrote a book in tribute to the slain Prime Minister, entitled ‘In the Name of Sorrow and Hope’.