Special Interview Celina Sokolow Recalls World Zionist Congresses over the Decades

The hundreds of people coming to the 29th World Zionist Congress this month in Jerusalem will include a woman who attended her first Zionist Congress 65 years ago and whose memories even predate the very first Congress in Basle in 1897 which Theodor Herzl convened and organized one year after the appearance of his work, “The Jewish State: An Attempt at a Modern Solution of the Jewish Problem.”

Disregarding her 91 years and the anxious dismay of her friends, Dr. Celina Sokolow, daughter of Zionist statesman Nahum Sokolow, has eagerly accepted an official invitation to attend the 29th Congress. She will fly to Israel next week and will stay at the King David Hotel. Among other veterans of Zionism whom she hopes to see during her stay is the daughter-in-law of philosopher Ahad Ha’am, Dr. Rosa Ginossar, honorary president of world WIZO.

Despite the infirmity which restricts her to a wheel chair, Sokolow retains a keen zest for life as well as a razor sharp memory. An admirer of Israeli Premier Menachem Begin, she was enrolled this week as an honorary member of the Herut Party in Britain. Emphatically, she told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the theme and message of the 29th Congress is to be summed up in one word “peace.”

Even though she has attended the last 18 consecutive Congresses, she admits that such gatherings may appear to be an anachronism. Nevertheless, on balance she thinks they retain a practical and symbolic value, bringing together Jews from all comers of the world and reminding them that “Israel gives the Jews more than they give Israel.”

MEMORIES OF GROWING ANTI-SEMITISM

It was as her father’s assistant that Celina Sokolow attended every Congress from 1913, and after his death in 1936 she was invited in her own right. Her strongest memories are of the growing anti-Semitism which surrounded the Congresses in European cities during the 1920s and 1930s.

She recalls the scenes in Vienna in 1925, when she and her father watched thousands of men and women marching up and down outside the Bristol Hotel shouting “Juden raus–haengt sie” (Jews out–hang them). Because of such outbreaks, some elements in the Zionist movement often suggested that the Congress be delayed or held elsewhere. But, she claims, her father always opposed such faint-heartedness and insisted that the show must go on.

The shadow of Hitler hung heavily over the Prague Congress of 1933 and the Luceme Congress of 1935, when Nahum Sokolow finally replaced Chaim Weizmann as president. At Prague, the Congress issued a defiant reply to German anti-Semitism, and afterwards Celina Sokolow and her father stayed as honored guests at the residence of Czech President Thomas Masaryk.

Celina was 10 when her father, the editor of the Warsaw Hebrew Paper, “Hasefira,” attended the very first Zionist Congress at Basle accompanied by Celina’s eldest sister, Maria. Ever afterwards there was a Herzl cult in their family. She still remembers the present which their father brought back from one of those early Congresses–a watch on which the hours were replaced by portraits of Zionist leaders.

Asked for the time, we would always reply: “Half-past Herzl” or “a quarter-to Nordau,” referring to Max Nordau, the vice-president of the 1st to 6th Zionist Congresses held in Herzl’s lifetime, and president of the 7th to the 10th Congresses after Herzl’s death. All those Zionist leaders are long since dead. But for Celina Sokolow, they are living memories.