Bokanowsky Buried in Jewish Cemetery

(Jewish Telegraphic Agency)

Funeral services for Maurice Bokanowsky, French Minister of Commerce and Aviation who was killed in an aeroplane accident on Sunday, were held at the Jewish cemetery here.

The traditional Jewish prayers for the dead. Eli Mole Rachmim and the Kaddish, were recited.

The mother of Maurice Bokanowsky, who is seventy-nine years old, was in Vichy, France, when the news of his death was brought to her. When told of his tragic death, despatches from Paris relate, Madame Bokanowsky said, her voice calm with restrained emotion: “During the war my son risked his life and was spared. Now, he died for his fatherland.”

Bokanowsky was forty-nine when he met his death and was the youngest member in Poincare’s cabinet. He was a member of the Conservative party which elected him to parliament for the first time in 1914. Since then he was successful in every contested election. In 1921 he was elected General Secretary to the Budget Commission of the French parliament and gained distinction in this post. When, in 1926, Poincare created his cabinet under the slogan: Saving France from bankruptcy he intrusted the Ministry of Commerce to Bokanowsky.

During the war, Bokanowsky was face to face with death when travelling on a French steamer to Salonica. The Germans torpedoed the ship and Bokanowsky was saved only after he had clung to a floating plank for twelve hours. During the last few years he was continually under attack on the part of the Royalists and anti-Semites in the country. His being a Jew and in addition the son of an immigrant Polish Jewish family were continually thrown up to him. Frequently the charge was made in the anti-Semitic press in France that as Minister of Commerce he “sells French interests to international Jewish bankers.” Notwithstanding this agitation. Bokanowsky’s reputation as an able and devoted French statesman grew.