Nahum Goldmann

Nahum Goldmann was born in 1894 in Višnieva

Goldmann was born in Vishnevo in the Russian Empire, in what is now Belarus. His father was an active Zionist, and as a child he moved with his family to Frankfurt, Germany. In 1911 he went with his father to the Tenth Zionist Congress.

He studied law, history and philosophy in Marburg, Heidelberg and Berlin. In 1913 he visited Palestine and later published a book of travel letters about it. During World War I he worked for a German intelligence and propaganda bureau and tried to gain German support for Zionism.

In 1922 he founded the Eschkol publishing house, which issued the Encyclopaedia Judaica in German and Hebrew. In 1935 Germany stripped him of his citizenship, and he became a citizen of Honduras. In 1936 he and Stephen Wise established the World Jewish Congress.

In 1940 he settled in the United States, where he represented the Jewish Agency. He helped organize the 1942 Zionist conference that adopted the Biltmore program. He supported dividing Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state and worked with David Ben-Gurion toward the creation of Israel.

He led the World Jewish Congress and the World Zionist Organization for many years. He died in Bad Reichenhall, Germany, in 1982 and was buried on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.