25,000 Mourn at Jabotinsky Rites; Work Stoppage in Palestine

With more than 25,000 persons crowding nearby streets, services were held today for Vladimir Jabotinsky, who died Saturday night at the age of 59, in the Gramercy Park Funeral Chapel, attended by some 750 Zionists of all factions, other Jewish leaders, public officials and non-Jewish admirers of the Zionist-Revisionist leader.

After a procession described by police as “one of the largest in the East Side’s history” and “the largest with a military background,” Jabotinsky was buried in a three ton concrete-bronze vault in the Max Nordau Circle of the New Montefiore Cemetery, Farmingdale, L.I., pending removal after the war to Palestine–from which he had been in exile for 20 years.

The simple orthodox service in the chapel was conducted by Rabbi Morris N. Rose of Temple Sinai, Brooklyn, and there were no eulogies, following the precedent set by Theodor Herzl’s funeral in 1904. While the rites were in progress, large crowds mourned on Second Avenue. Some had been there all night.

After the services a procession wended slowly up Second Avenue to Fourteenth Street and down to East Houston Street, where about 1,000 persons boarded buses and private automobiles to proceed to the cemetery. Yiddish theaters and Jewish institutions along the route were draped with black. As the procession passed the chapel a second time, it halted briefly while the Cantors’ Association sang “El Mole Rachamim.” The ceremony concluded with the singing of “Hatikvah,” in which thousands of bystanders joined the cantors. From the chapel, the procession was led by Max Greenberg, who lost a leg while fighting by Jabotinsky’s side with the Jewish Legion in Palestine.

In the procession were delegations from the Brith Trumpeldor, American Friends of Jewish Palestine, Jewish War Veterans of the United States, American Palestine Jewish Legion, Young Israel and other Jewish organizations. Many had tears in their eyes as the mass slowly moved down Second Avenue.

Borough Police Inspector John di Martino, who commanded a large police contingent, averted a possible accident when he diverted to another street an emergency truck speeding to a fire.

At the cemetery, the mourners were joined by scores of youths from the Betar Camp at Hunter, N.Y., where Jabotinsky died.

Among those who attended the chapel service were representatives of the British, Czechoslovak and Polish Governments, Stanley Lowe, representing Mayor LaGuardia; Ben Howe, chairman of the City Fusion Party, and James G. McDonald, chairman of the President’s Advisory Committee on Refugees.

Revisionist leaders present included Prof. Benjamin Akzin, Eliahu Ben-Horin and Captain Jeremiah Halpern. Others who attended were Edmund I. Kaufmann, president of the Zionist Organization of America; Dr. Hirsch J. Gordon, commander of the American Palestine Jewish Legion; Sol Masch, State Commander of the Jewish War Veterans; Maurice Schwartz, the actor; John Gunther, the author; Willard G. Stanton, secretary of the American Friends of a Jewish Palestine, and Col. J.H. Patterson, commander of the 1918 Palestine Jewish Legion.

The Yiddish press joined today in paying tribute to Jabotinsky. The Jewish Morning Journal said that “just as he represented the best in the Jewish people, so his death symbolized the tragedy of our time.” The Day said: “With Jabotinsky’s death there is removed from us a glorious personality in Jewish life, a wonderful and romantic figure, a clean man and a great idealist.” The Jewish Daily Forward called him “one of the most colorful personalities in a colorful, stormy Jewish generation.”