Truman Expresses Condolences on Weizmann’s Death; Eban Mourns

John F. Simmons, U.S. State Department Chief of Protocol, called on Ambassador Abba Eban today at the Embassy of Israel to express the condolences of President Truman on the death of President Weizmann of Israel. Other officials who called on Mr. Bean simultaneously with Simmons were Henry A. Byroade, Assistant Secretary of State, and Parker T. Hart, Director of the Office of Near Eastern Affairs. Byroade and Hart conveyed the condolences of Secretary of State Dean Acheson.

The White House today issued the following statement by President Truman on the death of Dr. Weizmann; “Mankind has lost an able leader in the death of Chaim Weizmann, Israel’s first President. His devotion to the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people, both before its realization and as the head of the new government, has brought him the respect and gratitude of millions. He was a man of wisdom and I was honored to know him.”

Ambassador Eban today issued the following statement: “Deep mourning descends upon the land of Israel and spreads through all the communities of the Jewish dispersion at the news that Chaim Weizmann is no longer at our head. He led Israel for 40 years through a wilderness of martyrdom and anguish, of savage oppression and frustrated hope, across the sharpest agony which has ever beset the life of any people and at the end of his days he entered in splendor and triumph upon his due inheritance of honor as the first President of Israel, the embodiment in modern time of the kingly and prophetic tradition which once flourished in Israel and became the most abiding source of light and redemption for succeeding generations of men.

“In the vigor of his youth Chaim Weizmann, the rational scientist seized upon an ideal remote from any realistic possibility of fulfillment and pursued it with implacable patience and faith until he saw phantasy transformed into fact by the sheej power of an unyielding will. No life lived in our generation offers greater testimony to the victory of fate in all the issues and enterprises of humanity.

“His Presidency symbolized the swift journey of the Jewish people, in this its most awesome decade, from the horrors and degradations of the European slaughterhouse and Oriental ghettos to unexpected heights of dignity and freedom in a sovereign State, securely established in the international family.

“During the dark years when to be a Jew was to bear a burden with little consolation or hope, our people looked with deep pride and longing upon his erect and majestic bearing, his dignity of mind and spirit, his intellect, refined and ordered like a cultivated garden, his profound moral influence in every free country upon the best minds and characters of his generation. In all this, there was the clear promise of a renewed Jewish dignity; there came a sudden bright flash of historic justice and the promise was fulfilled.

“Israel’s standards of quality, its pursuit of ancient moral values and modern scientific truth, its national ambition and its international prestige were all powerfully effected by the presence of this revered and paternal figure in our midst. We are now solely bereaved: ‘the crown of our head hath fallen down.’ But we may serve the Hebrew tradition worthily if we can establish the life of our Founder President as the standard which Israel should aspire to attain in all the expressions of its national character, in deed and thought.”