Walter W. Grunfeld has become the first Jew to head the National Newspaper Association. The 87-year-old association comprises 6000 community and small daily newspapers.
Grunfeld, who is the editor and publisher of the Independent Newspapers of Marathon and Tully in the Syracuse-Cortland area, is a native of Baden-Baden, Germany. He fled from the Nazis and came to England in 1938 and finally came to this country where he continued a newspaper career begun with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and the Reuters News Agency in Britain.
Grunfeld, whose father was a cantor in Baden-Baden, witnessed the infamous “Crystal Night” in 1938 when the community’s synagogue was destroyed by the Nazis. He is past president of Cortland’s Temple B’rith Shalom. He was elected recently president of the NNA during the group’s convention in Toronto.
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