Rabindranath Tagore, India’s poet and Nobel prize winner, and a staunch friend of Jews and Zionism, died today at the age of 80 in Celcutta.
Tagore, who had world-wide fame as a poet and philosopher, frequently expressed his opposition to the Nazi atrocities against the Jews. He also expressed “deep sympathy for the aims and aspirations of Zionism.”
In a statement made recently Tagore said: “I regard Jewish nationalism as an effort to preserve and enrich Jewish culture and tradition. I visualize a Palestine Commonwealth in which the Arabs will live their own religious life and the Jews will revive their resplendent future, but both will be united as one political and economic entity.”
Tagore last visited the United States in 1930, at which time he was seriously ill from a heart ailment and spent some time convalescing in New Haven.
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