Smolar Book Published

The publication of a book, “In the Service of My People,” by Boris Smolar, Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and former roving correspondent in European countries for Pulitzer’s New York World, was announced by the Baltimore Hebrew College. The book is published in hard cover for the general reader and libraries, and in soft cover for students of contemporary history, especially in schools of higher Jewish learning.

Smolar’s work for the JTA and The New York World took him to a number of countries where he met with Presidents and Premiers, including the first President of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Kalinin, and the first President of Israel, Dr. Chaim Weizman. He was the only American correspondent observing and reporting on developments in Jewish life in the Soviet Union in the early years of Stalin’s reign.

During the early years of the Nazi regime in Germany, Smolar was sent from New York to Berlin to report on the plight of the Jews in Germany. He was the only link between the leaders of the German Jews and the outside world. He supplied foreign correspondents with anti-Nazi information, as a result of which the Gestapo tried to arrest him several times. In 1936, Germany declared Smolar “a danger to the Third Reich” and deported him.

He was in Palestine during the Arab riots in 1929 and in 1936, and later witnessed the session of the United Nations at which the historic resolution leading to the establishment of the State of Israel was voted.

THE FACTS CAN NOW BE TOLD

Writing in the introduction to the book, Smolar states: “This is not an autobiography. It is a selection of episodes in my career as on American journalist. Some of the chapters contain facts which — for various reasons — could not be mode public at the time they occurred. They can now be told.”

Smolar continues to be an active journalist today with a regular weekly column, Between You and Me, which is syndicated by the JTA and appears in publications throughout the world in various languages. He also writes a weekly editorial essay for the Sunday edition of the Jewish Daily Forward in New York City.

In 1972, the Council of Jewish Federations established an annual award in his honor, The Smolar Award for Excellence in American Jewish Journalism. In 1980, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee established the JDC-Smolar Student Journalism Award. In 1968 he revisited the Soviet Union and wrote a book, “Soviet Jewry Today and Tomorrow.” It was published by Macmillan in 1971.