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Nathan Jacobson, a former president of the Zionist Federation of Australia, United Israel Appeal and The Executive Council of Australian Jewry, passed away at the age of 106.

Born in 1916 in Ukraine in a small town near Chornobyl. A brilliant student and sportsman, he was denied entry into Warsaw’s University because he was a Jew.

It took him three months to learn sufficient Hebrew to be able to study engineering at Haifa’s Technion. However, his primary commitment was to the Law. He arrived in Australia in 1936 and was soon able to acquire sufficient English to enrol as a tertiary law student at Melbourne University.

He was to become the senior partner of the firm Jacobson, Chamberlin and Casen.

He became president of the Victorian Jewish Board of Deputies 1956-1960, president of the Zionist Federation of Australia and New Zealand 1968-1970, president of the United Israel Appeal  1966–1969, president of the Executive Council of Australia Jewry 1970-1972 and 1974-1976.

He served on the Executive of the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture and on the Executive Committee of the Conference of Jewish Material Claims against Germany from 1971 to 1976. He was appointed an Officer in the Order of the British Empire. He helped to create the Australian Council of Christians and Jews and served as its treasurer from 1958 to 1970. He represented Australian Jewry at three international meetings of the World Jewish Congress.

His first marriage was to Martha Jacobson MBE, Federal President of Wizo Australia, an active and outspoken member of the ECAJ and who died in 1991. Nathan Jacobson’s second marriage, which would last thirty years, was to Lady Pamela Myer, the widow of Sir Norman Myer.