1961 Katz Pictorial Map of Kibbutz Settlements in Israel (Kibbutzim) in Hebrew

Shmuel Alexander (Sandor) Katz (שמואל כ"ץ; August 18, 1926 - March 26, 2010) was an Israeli illustrator, cartoonist, and artist. Born in Vienna, Austria, to Hungarian parents, Katz and his family relocated to Hungary after the Anschluss (Nazi Germany's annexation of Austria in March 1938). Katz attended school in Hungary, learned piano, and joined the Zionist youth movement HaNoar HaTzioni. He was deported to a forced labor camp in Yugoslavia after the Nazis invaded Hungary in 1944. He escaped from the camp and went to Budapest, where he was hidden from the Nazis by Carl Lutz in the now famous 'Glass House' network of safe houses, until the Red Army liberated Budapest in mid-February 1945. After the liberation, Katz joined the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement and studied architecture at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. Katz left Budapest for Mandatory Palestine in 1946 as an Aliyah Bet illegal immigrant aboard the Knesset Israel. The ship was apprehended by the British before arriving in Palestine and interned its passengers in a detention camp on Cyprus. Katz received a legal immigration certificate as part of a Hashomer Hatzair group that went to Israel and became the founders of Kibbutz Ga'aton in Western Galilee. Katz lived in Ga'aton for the rest of his life. His art career began in 1950, when he began illustrating Mishmar Layeladim, the weekly children's supplement to the Mapam party's newspaper Al HaMishmar which he did until 1953. Katz enrolled at the École national supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France, and studied copperplate engraving, lithography, fresco, and music in 1953 - 1954. he joined the Al HaMishmar editorial board in 1955 as illustrator and graphics editor. Katz traveled widely, including to East Africa in 1958, Iran in 1976, Egypt in 1979, and Hungary in 1986. His artwork has been exhibited worldwide, including in Tehran, Iran, in 1976. In 1961, he created courtroom sketches of Adolf Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem, which are now part of Yad Vashem's collection. Over the course of his career, he sketched soldiers while he served in the IDF, illustrated hundreds of books, and published editorial cartoons in numerous periodicals. More by this mapmaker...

The Jewish National Fund (JNF) (1901 - Present) is a non-profit organization founded to buy and develop land in Ottoman Palestine for Jewish settlement. In 1897, at the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, Hermann Schapira, a German-Jewish professor of mathematics, proposed the idea of creating a national land-purchasing fund. That fund, named Keren Hakayemet ('Jewish National Fund' in English), was founded in 1901 at the Fifth Zionist Congress, which also took place in Basel. In 1903, The JNF acquired its first parcel of land, as a gift from Russian Zionist leader Leib Goldberg. The JNF played a central role in founding Tel Aviv in 1909. By 1921, the JNF owned almost 25,000 acres, and by 1927, that number had risen to 50,000 acres. The JNF held 89,500 acres at the end of 1935, upon which 108 Jewish communities had been founded. By 1939, 10% of the Jewish population living in the British Mandate of Palestine lived on JNF land. By 1948, the year of Israeli independence, the JNF owned 54% of the land owned by Jews in British Palestine, or about 4% of the land in the entire mandate. After the establishment of Israel, the new Israeli government sold over 2,000 square kilometers of land to the JNF between 1949 and 1950. The JNF was dissolved and reorganized in 1950, when it was renamed Keren Kayemet LeYisrael. The JNF-KKL transferred the administration of all its land, with the exception of forested areas, to the Israel Land Administration (ILA), a newly formed Israeli government agency, in 1960. With that, the ILA administered 93% of the land in Israel, since the Israeli government owned 80% and the JNF-KKL owned approximately 13%. Learn More...