Efraim “Pichotka” Hiram, a Holocaust survivor who served as the eighth mayor of Ramat Hasharon, passed away on Tuesday at the age of 89.

Hiram was smuggled out of the Warsaw ghetto just before the deportations to the extermination camps began, and then lived under a false identity with a Polish family.He moved to Israel after the Holocaust, enlisted in the IDF and founded the 202nd Battalion. In 1988 he won the elections for the mayor of Ramat Hasharon and held the position for about a decade.