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Pinchos Cruso Dead at 96

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Funeral services will be held here tomorrow for Pinchos Cruso, a dominant personality in American Labor Zionism, who died Sunday at the age of 96.

Cruso was twice president of the Labor Zionist Organization of America, of which he had been a founder and was manager of the Labor Zionist publication, Jewish Frontier, for 40 years.

He became involved as an adolescent in Jewish and Zionist activities in his native Russia and at 17, went to Palestine as a member of the Second Aliyah.After serving in the U.S. Army in World War I, Cruso became active in Labor Zionism in the United States, organizing and serving as first secretary of the Young Poale Zion, forerunner of the LZOA, and its first secretary.

He organized and was secretary of the League for Labor Palestine. An intimate friend of David Ben Gurion and Golda Meir, Cruso was a frequent delegate to World Zionist Congresses and was named a WZO “Virilist.” At the time of his death he was honorary president of the Labor Zionist Alliance, which grew out of a merger of the LZOA and the Farband, the Labor Zionist fraternal order.

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