Dr. Joshua Starr, Jewish historian and scholar, died by his own hand last night at the age of 42. An analyst employed by the State Department’s “Voice of America” program, he was found dead of gas poisoning in his home here. Police listed his death as “apparent suicide.”
A graduate of the Teachers Institute of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Dr. Starr studied in Jerusalem on a fellowship and was the author of “The Jews in the Byzantine Empire.” From 1938 to 1942 he was executive secretary of the Conference on Jewish Relations. During the war he served with the Office of Strategic Services. He became associate director of the research department of the Joint Distribution Committee in 1946 and later was named executive secretary of Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, Inc., a post which he left three months ago.
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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.