The projected publication of a 20-volume “Encyclopedia of the Jewish Diaspora” in Israel under the editorial direction of Dr. Itzhak Gruenbaum, veteran Zionist and writer, former member of the Jewish Agency executive and first Minister of the Interior in Israel, was announced here today by Haim Barlass, managing director of the project. Mr. Barlass, one-time director of immigration of the Agency and the Israeli Ministry of Immigration, has come to the United States in connection with the publication of the encyclopedia.
Conceived as a perpetual monument to “a people which rose undaunted and uncrushed after the deadliest onslaught ever perpetrated in the whole of human history,” the encyclopedia will comprise not only monographs on the cities in which the masses of Jews lived, but also histories of the communities and townships, congregations and villages in which the Jewish population was scattered for generations before the Nazi holocaust.
The first section of the monumental work will be devoted to the memory of the great communities of the Jews–in Warsaw, Wilno, Lwow, Crakow, Bialystok, Brest-Litovsk, Odessa, Prague, Berlin and others. Each volume will be edited by a separate editorial board, Mr. Barlass disclose d, adding that contact will be maintained with the leading communities and Jewish organizations throughout the world in order to co-ordinate the work.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
