SANBAR (Sandberg), MOSHE

SANBAR (Sandberg), MOSHE (1926– ), Israeli economist. Sanbar was born in Hungary, and was imprisoned in German concentration camps during World War ii. He immigrated to Israel in 1948, and after studying economics, statistics, and sociology at the Hebrew University, served from 1951 to 1958 as project director and then deputy director of the Israel Institute of Applied Social Research. In 1958 he entered the civil service, serving in the Treasury successively as director of research, deputy director of state revenues, director of the budgets, and economic adviser. In 1968 he was appointed deputy chairman and from 1970 to 1971 chairman of the board of the Israel Development Bank Ltd. as well as chief economic adviser to the minister of finance (1969–71) and acting deputy minister of commerce and industry (1970–71).

In 1971 Sanbar succeeded David *Horowitz as governor of the Bank of Israel, holding the office until 1976. He represented Israel at the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (ibrd), International Development Association (ida), and International Finance Corporation (ifc), and was appointed by the government as chairman of the Economic Development and Refugee Rehabilitation Trust. In later years he served as chairman of the Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel, an umbrella organization for 29 groups and 300,000 survivors founded in 1989.

Sanbar wrote numerous articles and research studies dealing with income policy, taxation, budget policy, and central banking. His book My Longest Year (Hebrew and English, 1966), for which he was awarded the Yad Vashem Prize in 1967, describes his experiences during the German occupation of Hungary.

[Dov Genachowski]