Salman Schocken to Be Buried in Israel; Died Suddenly in Switzerland

Burial of Salman Schocken, noted publisher, bibliographer and long-time Zionist, who died this week-end of a heart attack in Switzerland, will take place in Israel, it was announced today by members of his family. Mr. Schocken, who was 81, fled from Nazi Germany in 1933 to Palestine. He came to the United States in 1940 and acquired citizenship here.

The owner of a chain of department stores in Germany before Hitler came to power, he also founded the Berlin Schocken publishing house in 1931, devoted to the publication of books of Jewish knowledge. After he left Germany, he founded in 1936 the Schocken Publishing House in Tel Aviv, which is now operated by members of his family, including his son Gustav, publisher of the Haaretz, one of the leading newspapers in Israel.

In New York, he founded Schocken Books, Inc., in 1945, which published books by Jewish authors and on Jewish subjects. More than 70 books have been published by the Schocken enterprise in New York. His private library of over 60,000 volumes of Jewish and world literature is housed in Jerusalem. It includes a large collection of rare manuscripts, incunabula and early prints. Mr. Schocken held honorary doctorate degrees from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. In 1933, Schocken was elected to the executive committee of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and from 1935 to 1945 served as its chairman.

When the Nazi party rose to power in 1933, he had realized that the very existence of German Jewry was doomed and, from then until the beginning of World War II, he made use of all the resources at his disposal to provide both physical and spiritual help to German Jewry. A Zionist since his early youth, he was a member of the board of directors of the Jewish national Fund. It was due to his efforts that the territory of the Haifa Bay area, so essential to the development of modern Israel, was acquired.