Shtorkh Gilel (06.06.1902, Dvinsk ― 25.04.1983) ― businessman, Jewish public figure.
He was born into the family of a major banker. From an early age he was involved in Zionist activity, and at just 18 became a representative of the Jewish Agency in the region.
In the mid-1920s he moved to Riga, where he continued his active Zionist work. His significant achievement in the prewar years was helping facilitate the emigration of about 3,000 Latvian Jews to Palestine.
Shortly before the invasion of Riga by Soviet forces, he left for Sweden, where he later managed to bring his family as well. He became the representative of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) in Sweden. During the Second World War, together with other Jewish and non-Jewish activists (Stephen Wise, president of the WJC, Count Folke Bernadotte, vice-president of the Swedish Red Cross, Marcus Ehrenpreis, chief rabbi of Sweden, and others), he sought out and found ways to help prisoners in ghettos and concentration camps. He managed to organize the dispatch of more than 70,000 food parcels to them, and in 1944 secured the government's permission for 350 Polish Jews rescued by the Jewish Agency to enter Sweden.
The most significant events of his humanitarian work took place in the final months of the war: in February 1945, on behalf of the WJC, Sh. established contact with the Baltic German F. Kersten, who was living in Stockholm and had for several years been the personal physician and masseur of H. Himmler. Kersten, understanding that Germany's defeat was inevitable and hoping to negotiate a softening of his own fate, agreed, in response to a memorandum from Sh. conveyed to him by Kersten, to issue an order not to blow up the concentration camps as Allied forces approached, and to help preserve the lives of the prisoners. As a result of further direct and indirect negotiations, in which Swedish statesmen and representatives of Jewish organizations, including Sh., took part, the lives of more than 20,000 Jewish and non-Jewish prisoners of the Bergen-Belsen, Theresienstadt, and Ravensbrück camps were saved. Thanks to his efforts, almost eight thousand Jews arrived in neutral Sweden shortly before the end of the war, and another eight thousand immediately after it ended.
In the postwar years Sh. did a great deal to help organize the reunification of members of Jewish families who had survived the Holocaust, donating significant personal funds for them. During the period of the founding of the State of Israel and the War of Independence, he was actively involved in acquiring and delivering weapons and equipment for the defenders of the young Jewish state.
Sh.'s friends included Count Folke Bernadotte, Raoul Wallenberg, Swedish prime ministers Tage Erlander and Olof Palme, and World Jewish Congress president Nahum Goldmann.
In 1952 he was awarded Sweden's highest honor ― the Order of the Vasa, 1st class.
Sh.'s son, Marcus, has served since 1999 as vice-chairman, and later chairman, of the board of directors of the Nobel Foundation.

Lit: Einhorn L. Commercial Traveler Dealing with Lives. Stockholm, 1999; Penkower M. N. The Jews were expendable. Chicago, 1983; Koblik S. The Stones Cry Out. New York, 1988; Kersten F. The Kersten Memoirs. London, 1956; Storch-Schwab E. A Daughter Remembers, in The Unfinished Road. New York, 1999. P. 175.

I. Brod