State and municipal authorities and outstanding representatives of the political and cultural world joined here in a series of celebrations this weekend, marking the 25th anniversary of Dr. Alfred Hirschberg as editor-in-chief of the newspaper Chronica Israelita, and as a leader in the Jewish communal and interfaith activities of the city.
Dr. Hirschberg, who is director in Brazil of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, began his Jewish communal activities in Germany in 1920. He assumed the editorship of the famed German Jewish weekly “CV Zeitung” in 1933, when Hitler came to power, and edited that paper in Berlin until the Nazis forced his emigration in 1938. He served at the same time as joint executive director of the Central Union of German Jews.
In Brazil, Dr. Hirschberg was a leader in the organization of the Christian-Jewish Brotherhood Council and of the Brazilian Institute for Human Rights. As executive director of the Sao Paulo Jewish community– the Congregacao Israelita Paulista — since 1940, Dr. Hirschberg was largely responsible for developing and modernizing the organizational setup and in developing relations between Latin America’s Jewish communities and in strengthening contacts and relationships with the non-Jewish world.
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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.
