Dr. Julius Brutzkus 60

Dr. Julius Brutzkus has just reached his 60th. birthday. Born in Polangen in Courland, Dr. Brutzkus took his medical degree at Moscow University, afterwards going to live in Petrograd, where he became Professor of Jewish learning. He was associated with Vinaver, Dr. Leo Bramson, and others in editing the Russo-Jewish periodical “Voschod”. Dogged by the Czarist authorities, he had to leave Petrograd, and went to Turkistan, where he was active in combating the cholera epidemic. To this period belongs his work on the life and folklore of the people of Turkistan. He returned in 1904 to Petrograd, where he worked on the Zionist monthly “Yevreskaya Szisn” and the Zionist weekly “Rassviet”, and was one of the recognised leaders of Russian Zionism. During the whole period of the war he was in the field as a military doctor. After the war he became Chairman of the Central Committee of the Russian Zionist Organisation. In 1920 he was arrested by the Soviet authorities together with other Zionists at an illegal Zionist Conference in Moscow and sentenced to five years imprisonment by the Cheka. He managed to regain his liberty in 1921, and went to Lithuania. He was for a time Minister for Jewish Affairs in Lithuania, leaving the country when it abolished Jewish autonomy, and since then he has lived in Berlin. He is a member of the Central Committee of the Zionist Revisionist World Union.

He plays a very prominent part also in Jewish social work, particularly in the Jewish Health Organisation Oze, the O.R.T. and the Emigdirekt. He has written much on Jewish history, notably the history of the Chassars, as well as a bibliography of Russian literature and history of the Jews of Courland.