Max Zellmann was born on March 12, 1928, in Frankfurt am Main. When he was three years old, his mother, Feige Rosa “Fanny” Zöllmann (née Reiner), was admitted to the Weilmünster Sanatorium and Nursing Home (https://gedenkbuch-weilmuenster.de/victims-lists/weilmuenster-patients/). She remained there from March 1933 until February 7, 1941. From there, she was taken to the Hadamar extermination facility and was likely murdered on the same day.

His father, Icyk, was not a German citizen and was forced to leave Germany in 1933. In 1944, he went to Palestine.

Max arrived at the “Isenburg” home from Frankfurt am Main on March 31, 1933, together with his sister, Hella Zellmann. Hella Zellmann is also listed in this memorial book.

On April 30, 1934, Max arrived at the children’s home in Dietz (now Diez), Rhineland-Palatinate. A year later, on August 20, 1935, he was forced to leave the children’s home because the Nazis evicted the residents, who were forced to flee. He was taken to the orphanage on Röderbergweg in Frankfurt am Main. 

On November 11, 1938, his sister Hella also arrived at this home after the Nazis had destroyed the main building of the “Isenburg” home, where the schoolchildren had been housed.

On December 6, 1938, Max and Hella Zellmann fled the orphanage along with other children and were taken to France on a Kindertransport. There, they were hidden by the children’s rescue organization “Œuvre de secours aux enfants (OSE)” at the Le Couret children’s home in Saint-Laurent-les-Églises. In 1941, they were hidden at the Château de Couret in the Haute-Vienne department in the Pyrenees. He crossed the Pyrenees and arrived in Cádiz, Spain. From there, he traveled by ship to Palestine.

He was rescued and brought to Palestine through the Youth Aliyah program.

Max Zellmann, who called himself Mordechai Yaron in Israel, founded a kibbutz in southern Israel (Kibbutz Gevim). He married Ilana Bodenheimer, who was born in Niederhöchstadt in 1928 and had come to Israel with him in 1944. The couple had two children. They left the kibbutz. Max studied landscape architecture, founded his own firm, and designed many significant sites in southern Israel, including residential neighborhoods, universities, and kibbutzim.

He lived to be 90 years old and died in 2019.

Sources: Neu-Isenburg Stadtarchiv; this biography was completed thanks to his daughter, Dorit Yaron, and Dr. Lothar Tetzner. 

Last updated: August 18, 2026 (EEP)