Nahum Goldmann

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nahum Goldmann signing the Reparations Treaty with Germany
Nahum Goldmann signing the Reparations Treaty with Germany

Nahum Goldmann (Hebrew: נחום גולדמן) (July 10, 1895–August 29, 1982) was a Polish-born Israeli Zionist and founder and longtime president of the World Jewish Congress.

Contents

[edit] Education

Nahum Goldmann was born in Wischnewo (now Wisziewiec), Poland, the son of a teaching and writing family, and moved with his parents in 1900 to Frankfurt, Germany. Goldmann studied law, history, and philosophy in Marburg, Heidelberg, and Berlin. He graduated in law and philosophy.

[edit] Pre-Nazi Germany

Goldmann was involved in the Zionist movement from an early age. In 1918, while working at the Jewish division of the German Foreign Ministry, he attempted to enlist Kaiser Wilhelm's support for the Zionist ideal. In 1922 he founded the Eschkol-Publikations-Gesellschaft (Eschkol Publication Society), and was involved in publishing a Zionist periodical. In 1929 he started the Encyclopædia Judaica and published twelve volumes (ten in German and two in Hebrew). He was early in predicting the severe and acute threat the Nazi Party posed to the Jews.

During the period of the British Mandate in Palestine, Goldmann was involved in a range of Zionist causes, including negotiations with the British, and when the Nazis seized power in Germany, Goldmann was in Palestine visiting his uncle. In 1935 he was stripped of his German citizenship, and fled to Honduras and later New York City, where he represented the Jewish Agency for several years. He later returned to Geneva to organize and help the flight of Jews across Europe. From 1940 to 1964 he lived as an American citizen in the United States.

Goldmann reported in his 1978 book Das jüdische Paradox (The Jewish Paradox): "The car stopped in front of the porch and at the sight of us, Roosevelt said: 'Just look, [Sam] Rosenman, [Rabbi] Stephen Wise, and Goldmann are having a discussion. Go ahead, Sam will tell me what I have to do on Monday.' His car started and Roosevelt had it stop again to say: 'Could you imagine what Goebbels would give to have a picture of this scene. The President of the United States is getting his advice from the Three Wise Men of Zion.'"

Nachum Goldmann and Stephen Wise, and consequently the large American Zionist/Jewish organizations they represented, were leading and powerful opponents of Hillel Kook's (Peter Bergson) and his group's intense rescue efforts on behalf of Europe's abandoned Jews. Protocol of Nachum Goldman's meeting at the State Department requesting deportation or drafting of Hillel Kook is in an appendix of Professor David Wyman's and Dr. Rafael Medoff's book "A Race Against Death: Peter Bergson, America, and the Holocaust".

[edit] After World War II

Goldmann had long supported the creation of two states in Palestine, one Arab and one Jewish; his view was that independence was more important than controlling a specific territory. After the war he worked actively with David Ben Gurion towards the creation of Israel. He was concerned—as it turns out, appropriately—that an Arab-Israeli war would break out after the British left their Mandate and the State of Israel was proclaimed.

From 1951 he was the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Jewish Agency. In that year, he convened a meeting in New York City of 23 major Jewish national and international organizations to address the task of negotiating an agreement with the West German government for the reparations of Jews with respect to losses caused by Germany through the Holocaust. The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (also known as the Claims Conference) was the organization that emerged from this meeting. On September 10, 1952, after six months of negotiations, a reparations agreement between the Claims Conference and the government of West German was reached. Noting the historic import of the agreement, David Ben-Gurion said in a 1952 Dr. Goldmann, “For the first time in the history of the Jewish people, oppressed and plundered for hundreds of years…the oppressor and plunderer has had to hand back some of the spoil and pay collective compensation for part of the material losses.” In 1954 a similar treaty was signed between Austria and Israel.

Goldmann served from 1948 to 1977 as president of the World Jewish Congress, the co-ordinating body for many Jewish societies outside Israel. He supported Israel in other countries, even though he was a profound critic of official Israeli policies. From 1956 to 1968, Goldmann served as the President of the World Zionist Organization. He became a citizen of Israel in 1962, and of Switzerland in 1969. He never took up permanent residence in Israel, dividing his time between Israel and Switzerland. During his life he had seven citizenships, and lived the last part of it in Paris, France.

Though a strong supporter of Israel, Goldmann was also a strong supporter of the idea of a healthy Diaspora. He was concerned about Jewish assimilation, and fought to strengthen Jewish education, culture, and institutions outside of Israel. He also took up other causes, including that of Soviet Jewry, and founded the Conference of Jewish Organizations (COJO).

Goldmann tried to negotiate between Israel and the neighboring Arab states, and was critical of Israel for what he saw as an over-reliance on military might, and for not making more concessions after the 1967 Six-Day War, advocating a position that the only chance of long-term survival for Israel was to accept the rights of the Palestinians as a people. In 1970 he tried to talk to Egyptian president Gamel Abdel Nasser, but was stopped by the Israeli government. Attempts to contact Palestine Liberation Organisation leader Yasser Arafat in 1974 were even seen as high treason. Goldmann thought this behavior to be foolish. In 1982 he called on the Israeli Prime Minister not to reanimate anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism with the campaign in the Lebanon. Goldmann's vision was to make Israel the spiritual and moral centre for all Jews, but a neutral state, somewhat on the model of Switzerland, with international guarantees of its security, existence and borders, and perhaps even a permanent symbolic international presence. This was intended as a step towards defusing Cold War rivalries and even more, the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Goldmann died in Bad Reichenhall, Germany. He was buried in Jerusalem's Har Herzl National Cemetery in the plot of presidents of the World Zionist Organization.

[edit] Works by Goldmann

[edit] References

  • This article draws heavily on the corresponding article in the German Wikipedia, accessed 5 April 2005.
  • Wyman, David S., Medoff, Rafael. A Race Against Death: Peter Bergson, America, and the Holocaust. New Press, 2004.

[edit] External links