Raoul Șorban

Raoul Șorban (September 4, 1912 – July 19, 2006) was a Romanian painter, journalist, writer, essayist, art historian, academic, and memoirist.

His father, the composer Guilelm Șorban, descended from an old ethnic Romanian noble family in Transylvania; his grandmother was of Alsatian origin.

Born in Dej (then Dés, Kingdom of Hungary), Șorban studied painting and music in Italy (at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan), Austria and Germany between 1930 and 1934.

In 1944, Șorban played an active part in the rescue of Jews who faced death during The Holocaust, helping the remaining members of the community to escape to British Palestine.

The Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum awarded him in 1987 the Righteous Among the Nations title for his efforts to save the Transylvanian Jews from extermination.