Friedel Stern (1917 Leipzig, Germany - October 29, 2006, Tel Aviv, Israel) was a German- born Israeli cartoonist and illustrator. Biography Friedel Stern was born in Leipzig, Germany, in 1917, eldest of four children. Her family was Jewish but not Zionist. However, when anti-Semitism began to take hold in Germany, she stopped her art studies, and, encouraged by her mother, joined the Jewish Scouts movement. She immigrated to Palestine with this group in 1936 to Kibbutz Kfar Maccabi. However, a short while later she moved to Haifa. She worked as a cook and housemaid and took evening courses in sketching with Professor Hoenich. At the end of the 1930s, she studied art and design at Bezalel art school in Jerusalem. During the Second World War, she joined the volunteers in the Auxiliary Women’s Corps of the British Army as a nurse. In the early 1940s, she was sent to serve in the officers’ school in Gaza and joined the liberation army in Italy, where she was assigned to the camouflage unit. During the war, she sketched and illustrated scenes depicting the daily life of the British soldiers. In 1944 she showed her sketches at the exhibition “Allied Forces Artists” in Egypt. For her military service, Friedel was awarded a citation from the King of Britain. After her release from the army, Friedel returned to Palestine and started to work as a graphic designer of maps at the Survey of Palestine, which was later to become the Measuring Department. One of her innovations was illustrating the drawing of the maps of Palestine. Such a collection of maps was published in 1953 under the title Israel in 14 Pictorial Maps. In 1946 Friedel started to publish cartoons in the journal Bamahane. It was then that she designed her signature composed of her first name: Friedel and a star, symbolizing the meaning of her family name in German “Stern”. This signature was meant to differentiate her from Yossi Stern who was the graphics editor of the journal. Due to the success of this publication, Friedel started to publish her cartoons regularly in the newspapers Davar, Dvar Ha’Shavua and La’isha. In the 1950s Friedel started to publish journalistic articles where she examined the Israeli society critically. For some of these articles, she disguised herself as various ethnic types. In 1956, for instance, she disguised herself as an immigrant from Morocco and was treated with