Zev Birger (; June 1, 1926 – June 6, 2011) was a founder of the Sons of Zion Organization that worked to preserve Hebrew culture and language during World War II. He was also active in Aliyah Bet (illegal immigration organization) that organized the immigration of Holocaust survivors to Israel. He help set up of State of Israel's Customs and Excise Department, served as Deputy Minister of Commerce and Industry, as a special assistant to Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek for the development of culture, the economy and tourism in the city, and directed the Jerusalem International Book Fair. Among those who nurtured Israeli cinema, he was a founder of Sam Spiegel Film & Television School. Biography Zev Birger was born in Kovno (Kaunas), Lithuania, to Feiga Tzippora née Kaplan and Pinchas Birger. Feiga and Pinchas Birger had a solidly Zionist worldview and a strong belief in the need to establish a national home for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel, and passed these views on to their children. When Zev was ten, World War II began but it had only a marginal effect on Lithuania until September 1940, when Lithuania was annexed to the Soviet Union. When the Soviets invaded, the activities of Zionist organizations were banned. At first, many people, including Zev's parents, thought the Soviets would be better than the Germans, but the Soviets immediately began to confiscate property and persecute the Lithuanian bourgeoisie, including many Jews. In mid-June 1941, the German invasion of the Soviet Union began, and it took only one week for all of Lithuania to fall into their hands. In July, they began to gather all of the Jews into a ghetto in Slobodka, a suburb of Kovno. Like many other Jews, the Birger family left almost all of their possessions behind, and moved into a small room in the ghetto. Periodically, there was an "aktion" or round-up in which groups of Jews were chosen randomly and sent to be executed. At the beginning of the war, in 1940, Zev Birger was among the founders of the Sons of Zion Organization that undertook the Zionist education of Jewish teens and struggled to preserve Hebrew culture and language, which had been outlawed by the Soviet authorities. The movement published a journal, Nitzotz ("Spark"). Birger was partner in publication of the hand-written journal that was distributed in the Lithuanian underground, in the ghetto and