Funeral services were held today for Herman Bernstein, noted Jewish journalist and former United States Minister to Albania, who died in Sheffield, Mass., of heart-disease at the age of 58 last Saturday.
Services were held from the Park West Memorial Chapel with Rabbi Levy of the Society of Jewish Science officiating. Burial was at the Montefiore Cemetery, Springfield, L. I.
Mr. Bernstein suffered a heart attack last Thursday. His condition suddenly became worse Friday and he died two A.M. Saturday. At his bedside were his son, David, his wife, the former Sophie Friedman, and his daughter, Mrs. H. Nash. He is also survived by two other daughters, Dorothy and Violet.
In a long and adventurous newspaper career, Mr. Bernstein was noted for having published the “Willy-Nicky” correspondence between the Kaiser and the Czar, for having exposed the notorious “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” as a forgery and for having sued Henry Ford for libel against the Jewish people.
It is said Mr. Bernstein was the first Jewish journalist to interview the Pope (Pope Benedict XV) and the first American journalist to enter Soviet Russia after the war.
The list of men he interviewed sounds like a Who’s Who. Among the more notable men with whom he discussed world affairs were: Count Metchnikoff, Leo Tolstoy, Henri Bergson, Count Witte, Auguste Rodin, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Havelock Ellis, Max Nordau, Chaim Weizmann, Albert Einstein, Alexander Kerensky, Paul Miliukoff, G. B. Shaw and Lord Robert Cecil.
His last editorial position was editor of the Jewish Daily Bulletin, which post he resigned last Fall. Before that he had held numerous other jobs on Jewish and English publications. He served as European correspondent for the New York Times and New York Herald.
In the Jewish field, he was first editor of the Day, and editor of the American Hebrew and the Jewish Tribune.
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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.