Yaacob Kranzdorf

The son of Sarah and Eliezer, he was born in 1904 in Bucharest, Romania. He was the ninth of a family of thirteen children. His father was a rabbinical rabbi and his mother a housewife. His brothers enlisted to help him and paid his tuition and living expenses while he studied medicine in the city of Modena, Italy. He returned to Romania after completing his studies and married Gisela née Goldstein, (sister of left-wing activist Max Goldstein). He and his wife were loyal to communist ideology and the central values that guided them were helping the needy and the marginalized and fighting for absolute justice. He was not one to rest on his laurels and, together with a group of other doctors, traveled to Spain to take part in the struggle against fascism during the civil war and was involved in saving lives there. Alongside his fellow doctors, he secretly crossed the Pyrenees Mountains and arrived in Spain. In Spain, he joined the Republican forces that fought against Francisco Franco's fascism. His work, along with the other doctors who came with him, included treating the wounded on the battlefield and in hospitals, many of them combatants. In February 1939, with the victory of Franco's forces, the volunteers left Spain and arrived in France, where they were placed in quarantine camps. In June 1939, following the Japanese massacre in Nanking, China, he joined a group of 20 doctors who responded to the call of British and Norwegian organizations to provide medical aid to China. The volunteers' journey by sea lasted about a month until they reached China. Finally, they arrived in Hong Kong, where they were warmly welcomed. They were called the "Spanish Doctors" because they came from the Spanish anti-fascist front. In China, they were welcomed by Song Ching-ling, the widow of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the founder of the Republic of China and the first president of China. After visiting parts of the country occupied by the Japanese, they arrived in Guangzhou, where they settled in the center of the Chinese Red Cross. Their desire to join the communist army units was not possible.

On the recommendation of the communist leader Chou En-lai, he was assigned to the units of the Chinese General Army. He treated the wounded and sick on the battlefield as well as the local population, preventing epidemics and helping to prepare a Chinese medical team. Due to a shortage of skilled personnel, he asked his wife Gisela, who was in Romania at the time, to come to the aid of the Chinese people. In 1940, Gisela arrived in China and joined her husband in his work.

In 1943, the couple fell ill with typhus. Gisela died and he recovered. Later, the Chinese erected a monument to her at her presumed burial site. When he recovered, He continued to work at a hospital in Yunnan.

In August 1945, after the surrender of Japan, he was made an honorary member of the Chinese Red Cross. In April 1946, he began working at the UNRWA offices in Dangzhou, where his job was to transport and distribute medical supplies, medical equipment, and medicines to areas in need.

During his work, he met a Chinese nurse named Zhao Zengfu, who later became known as Nellie. She worked at a Red Cross hospital and helped him translate medical documents. The couple fell in love and married. At the end of 1947, with the end of UNRWA's activities in China, the couple returned to Shanghai where they met with Mrs. Song Qingling, who thanked him for his activities and called him "a friend of the Chinese people."

In 1948, the couple left China and returned to Romania, ten years after leaving their homeland. In Romania, he held senior positions in the Romanian Ministry of Health and Interior and even served as Deputy Minister of Health. For the purpose of the position, he changed his name to Bucur Clejan.

He died on January 13, 1975.