Yassky, Chaim

(1896–1948)

   Medical administrator in Jerusalem. Yassky became a Zionist in southern Russia, where he was born, and settled in Palestine in the 1920s after completing his medical studies in Europe. He had spe-cialized in ophthalmology and in 1924 was assigned by the Hadassah Medical Organization to deal with the problem of trachoma in Judea. In 1931 Yassky became director of Hadassah, in which role he initiated the building of the Rothschild-Hadassah University Hospital on Mount Scopus. The hospital and university were cut off from the rest of Jewish Jerusalem during the fierce fighting there between Jews and Arabs in the spring of 1948. Yassky lost his life when he set out as one of a party of 77 doctors, university teachers, nurses and students making up a convoy to Mount Scopus under a Red Cross flag. The entire convoy was ambushed and massacred by the Arabs.