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City of Frankfurt
Honors
Buchmann
Vice Chairman of the TAU Board of
Governors and major TAU benefactor
Josef Buchmann was presented with
a Badge of Honor of Frankfurt by the
Lord Mayor of the City of Frankfurt
Petra Roth, a TAU honorary doctor.
TAU President Joseph Klafter especially
flew in to give the main speech at the
ceremony. Here are excerpts:
“Josef Buchmann has played a vital role over three
decades in building up Tel Aviv University, in fortifying
the German-Israeli relationship, and in strengthening the
State of Israel.
Josef’s involvement with Tel Aviv University began in
1980, when he initiated the establishment of the Frankfurt
Chair for Visiting Professors. Very soon afterwards, he endowed
the Josef Buchmann Fellowship Fund jointly at Tel
Aviv University and the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University.
It was the first bi-national doctoral fund at Tel Aviv
University and it was – and still remains – the largest fund
of its kind, having given over 300 fellowships to PhD students
in Tel Aviv and Frankfurt.
Josef’s next project at Tel Aviv University was endowing
the law school in the memory of his parents, Eliezer and
Haya Sara Buchmann, who perished in the Holocaust. The
Buchmann Faculty has evolved into the country’s most influential
law school, internationally recognized for its high
quality research, practical training, and pursuit of social
justice. Just this year we received Buchmann funding for a
new legal clinic for Holocaust survivor rights.
The fellowships, the law school – one could understand
if Josef had stopped there. But he had a bolder vision, his
largest yet for Tel Aviv University.
He proposed to join three great loves – the Israel
Philharmonic Orchestra, Zubin Mehta, and Tel Aviv
University – into one, groundbreaking project.
And thus the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music was
Leadership
born. Founded in 2004, the school is now Israel’s leading
institution in the field. Its activities are carried out in full
partnership with the Israel Philharmonic and its honorary
president and guiding personality is Maestro Zubin Mehta.
Four years ago, the school’s orchestra played a special
memorial concert for the United Nations General Assembly
on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which coincided
with the date Auschwitz was liberated. Ninety young
students, many of whom were grandchildren of Holocaust
survivors, performed in a concert entirely sponsored by
Josef, himself a Holocaust survivor.
Buchmann is also funding an international scholarship
program that brings outstanding foreign students to the
Buchmann-Mehta School.
There is another side of Josef that is not connected to
the University that I would like to talk about, the side that
is always ready to help.
He has personally welcomed new immigrants from Russia
coming to Israel and made sure they received hot meals.
He has enabled 250 Israeli children to receive a traditional
Jewish education, together with hot lunches, at the Buchmann
Educational Campus. He has donated medical equipment
to save the lives of Israeli soldiers. He has established the
Buchmann Ward at the Sourasky Medical Center and
the Buchmann Gynecology and Maternity Center at Tel
Hashomer in Israel; and the Buchmann Children’s Hospital
in Frankfurt.
He has also never forgotten his native city of Lodz, Poland,
From
left: TAU
President
Joseph
Klafter with
Bareket
and Dr.
(h.c.) Josef
Buchmann
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