Ernest Stock

Ernest Stock was born in 1924 in Frankfort, Germany, where he attended the Philanthropin, the comprehensive school of the Jewish community, until it closed down after the "Crystal Night" in November 1938.

On December 6 his mother sent him with his younger sister on a Kindertransport to Alsace, France, after his father was deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp. In Strasbourg Stock worked as apprentice to a photographer, until the outbreak of war caused the two children to seek refuge in the Paris area. In June 1940 they fled on bicycles before the invading German army and, after crossing Spain and Portugal, reached the U.S. where their mother awaited them. Their father had meanwhile escaped to Holland and survived the war in hiding with a Dutch family.

Stock was drafted into the U.S. army in May 1943, became an American citizen after basic training, and a year later was back on European soil, in Normandy. He also returned to Frankfort as an American soldier in April1945. He was given permission to search for his father in Holland and found him there shortly after the war ended.

Upon discharge from the army, Stock was admitted to Princeton University where he studied at its School of Public and International Affairs, graduating magna cum laude. He later received a Master's degree from the Columbia School of Journalism and a doctorate from Columbia in Public Law and Government. His studies at Princeton, which included Middle Eastern politics, strengthened his belief in the need for a Jewish state. In 1949 he visited Israel for the first time as a freelance journalist and then worked for a year as foreign editor of the Jerusalem Post (then still the Palestine Post).

In 1952 Stock was among four recipients of a Ford Foundation Near East Area Research fellowship, which enabled him to study Israeli foreign policy, in particular relations with the U.S. The research, carried on under the auspices of the Israel Institute for Social Research, formed the basis of his doctoral thesis, Israel on the Road to Sinai, published in 1967 by Cornell University Press.

In 1961 Stock was named by the Jewish Agency, Inc. to serve as its permanent representative in Jerusalem, in charge of reporting on the use of American philanthropic funds by its Israeli beneficiaries. In the interim, he worked for American Jewish organizations, including the Hillel Foundations and the Council of Jewish Federations, and contributed articles to various periodicals. His second major assignment in Israel was as Director of Brandeis University's overseas studies program in Jerusalem, from 1966 – 1978. He also taught in the Politics Departments of the Tel Aviv and Bar-Ilan Universities and published three books on his specialty, the relations between Israel and Diaspora Jewry. A fourth title is Jews and Arabs in Israel (published by the American Jewish Committee) and a fifth deals with the Jewish communities in postwar Europe (based on a three-year stay in Paris as Director of the Europan Council of Jewish Community Services, 1979-82).

Dr, Stock married his Israeli-born wife, Bracha, in 1951. Their son, Adlai, is a graphic designer in Tel Aviv.