The biographies listed from Chaim Weizmann’s papers are those individuals with whom he corresponded from the 1870s to 1951. The list includes Americans, Europeans, Zionists and British officials. Each biography is extensive, including affiliation, career high points and other valuable information not usually available elsewhere.
Abzug was the first Jewish woman elected to Congress, representing New York as a Democrat in the House from 1971 to 1977. The daughter of immigrants from Russia, she joined Zionist youth group Hashomer Hatzir…
Adenauer, West Germany’s chancellor from 1949 to 1963, initiated talks in March 1952 that resulted in West Germany agreeing to pay Israel 3 billion marks over 12 years as Holocaust reparations. The funds were crucial…
Almog, a retired IDF major general, was unanimously nominated in June 2022 to serve a four-year term as the chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, succeeding Isaac Herzog. A paratrooper, Almog was the first…
Arlosoroff, an ardent socialist and Zionist, was born in Ukraine and immigrated to Palestine in 1921. He was a founder of the Histadrut labor federation. Working with the Jewish Agency, he helped negotiate the Haavara…
Avineri, a native of Poland, was one of Israel’s premier political scientists as a Hebrew University professor and wrote extensively on the history of political philosophy, including Marx, Engels, Hegel, Zionism, colonialism and the Soviet…
Balfour, an English politician and diplomat who served as the British prime minister from 1902 to 1905, was the foreign secretary in November 1917 when he sent a letter to Lord Rothschild that became known…
Lithuania-born Barak was a 28-year Supreme Court justice who served as the president of the court from 1995 to 2006. He lifted restrictions on individual petitions to the court and strengthened the judiciary’s authority to…
Born in Belarus, Begin joined the Revisionist Betar movement and escaped Nazis and Soviets to reach Palestine. He led the Irgun, then spent three decades in the political opposition, including arguing against German reparations. In…
The first Jew on the U.S. Supreme Court, Brandeis influenced many American Jews in the early 20th century to become Zionists. He persuaded President Woodrow Wilson, a close friend, to support the 1917 Balfour Declaration…
Ukrainian-born Brodetsky engaged the Zionist movement as an undergraduate at Cambridge. He attended the Twelfth to Twenty-Third Zionist Congresses and served with the World Zionist Executive from 1928 to 1951. He was the president of…
Bunche, an American diplomat, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950 for brokering the armistice agreements between Israel and four Arab neighbors in 1949. He served in 1947 with the U.N. Special Committee on Palestine,…
The 43rd U.S. president, Bush offered a vision for a two-state Israeli-Palestinian solution in June 2002 that inspired the “Roadmap for Peace” presented by the Quartet (the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia)…
The 39th U.S. president, Carter mediated the 1978 Camp David Accords and 1979 peace treaty between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. The treaty was the first between Israel and an…
Celler was New York’s longest-serving congressman, holding a House seat from 1923 to 1973. He read Herzl during World War I and became a Zionist. He attempted to assist fellow Jews by opposing the Immigration…
Churchill visited Palestine in March 1921 as the British secretary of state for the colonies and declared that a Jewish national home would be a “blessing to the whole world.” In July 1922, after the…
As a special presidential counsel, Clifford opposed the pro-Arab State Department and urged President Harry Truman to maintain support for the U.N. partition of Palestine and to lift the arms embargo on Jewish forces heading…
As president, Clinton hosted the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords, helped Jordan and Israel achieve a peace treaty in 1994, and mediated the 1995 Oslo II agreement that recognized the Palestinian Authority. He brokered…
A leader of the Labor Party Zionists in the British Parliament, Crossman served on the 1944-1946 Anglo-American Palestine Commission, which aimed to set the number of Jews permitted into Palestine after World War II. He…
A close adviser to Chaim Weizmann on his relations with British officials, Dugdale was a strong, non-Jewish advocate for Zionism. A niece of Arthur Balfour’s, she wrote a biography of him and a book on…
A native of Cape Town, South Africa, who was raised in England and made aliyah in 1944, Eban was a diplomat, politician and writer. With the Jewish Agency’s U.N. delegation, he was heavily involved in…
A Ukraine-born journalist, politician and diplomat, Elath arrived in the Land of Israel in 1924, joined the Jewish Agency in 1934, and became Israel’s first ambassador to the United States and, when the diplomatic post…
García-Granados, Guatemala’s ambassador to the United Nations and a member of the U.N. Special Committee on Palestine, was moved by Chaim Weizmann’s partition pleas to UNSCOP in July 1947 and cast the first vote for…
Lloyd George was the British prime minister from 1916 to 1922. His government issued the Balfour Declaration and took control of Palestine during World War I, negotiated for the inclusion of the declaration’s language at…
