Funeral services will be held tomorrow morning at Temple Emanuel, Fifth Avenue, for S. Ralph Lazrus, industrialist and philanthropist, who died last week-end after a brief illness at the age of 61.
Mr. Lazus was, for many years, a member of the board and the treasurer of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, and took an active part in its operations during the critical pre-war and war years. He was a close friend of the late Prof. Albert Einstein with whom he was associated in a number of communal educational activities.
Mr. Lazrus was a trustee of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York, a national board member of the United Jewish Appeal since 1945 and vice chairman of the UJA New York campaign from 1942 to 1949. He was chairman of the executive committee of the Jewish Hospital of Brooklyn. He was one of the leaders in the establishment of Brandeis University at Waltham, Mass. In recent years he was interested in the Chicago Medical School.
Mr. Lazrus, a native of New York City, founded the Benrus Watch Company with his two older brothers in 1919 and was prominent in the watch industry, having served for five terms as national president of the American Watch Association
A keen student of international affairs, he was one of the organizers of the Overseas News Agency established by the late Herbert Bayard Swope, William Allen White and Jacob Landau in 1940 to report on the basic developments of the democratic fight against Nazism and fascism. He also served on the committee on foreign affairs of the Democratic National Committee’s advisory council.
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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.
