His death was announced on Twitter by Haaretz journalist Ofer Aderet. He will be buried in Jerusalem on Sunday.
“The death of Shevah Weiss is a great loss for Polish-Israeli relations,” Polish president Andrzej Duda wrote on Twitter on Saturday.
“A wonderful man, Jew, Israeli patriot who loved and respected Poland”, Duda added.
Shevah Weiss was born in 1935 in Boryslav (today in Lviv Oblast of Ukraine) into a Polish-Jewish family, IAR wrote.
He survived the Holocaust with his family members after they were hidden from German soldiers with the help of Ukrainian and Polish families.
After World War II, he migrated in 1947 to Israel where he became a professor of political science at Haifa University.
Between 1988 and 1992, Weiss served as a Deputy Speaker of the Knesset (Israel's unicameral parliament), and between 1992 and 1996 as Speaker.
He held the post of Israel’s ambassador to Poland between 2001-2003.
His wartime experience pushed Weiss to always protest when Poland was accused of complicity in the Holocaust, or when Poland’s role in saving Jews was being questioned, the Rzeczpospolita daily wrote.
Weiss also protested when world news outlets used the erroneous term of “Polish death camps”.
“This is a shameful lie and wickedness. After all, besides Jews, hundreds of thousands of Poles perished in these camps,” he was quoted as saying by Rzeczpospolita.
Weiss was awarded in Poland with top state distinctions, including the country’s highest Order of the White Eagle as well as the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland.
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Source: IAR, Rzeczpospolita