Pierre van Paassen, one of the first Christian advocates of Jewish statehood, a best-selling author, and a Unitarian minister, died here today after a long illness. He was 72.
Author of nearly a dozen best-selling books describing his reporting as a roving foreign correspondent, he was born in the Netherlands, emigrating to Canada when he was 19 to study for the Protestant ministry at Toronto University, and studying in Paris after service in World War I. He worked as a reporter for many newspapers, interviewing Hitler several times. When the Nazis came to power, he was expelled from Germany, and later from France by Pierre Laval.
He first visited Palestine in 1925 and then, in the interest of Zionism, he roamed the ghettoes of pre-war Eastern Europe, also visiting the Arab countries. A close friend of the late Revisionist leader, Vladimir Jabotinsky, he served as national chairman of the Committee for a Jewish Army during World War II.
In 1929, he was attacked and wounded by mobsters in the pay of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the leader and organizer of the Arab riots against Jews, in that year, he was made an honorary citizen of Tel Aviv, the only Christian ever to receive that honor. He was a recipient of a Doctor of Hebrew Letters from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion of New York.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
