Vladimir Jabotinsky Dies of Heart Attack at 59; Was Visiting Youth Camp

Vladimir Jabotinsky, prominent Zionist-Revisionist leader, writer and soldier, died of coronary thrombosis shortly before midnight last night at Camp Betar near Hunter, N.Y., it was announce here today by the New Zionist Organization, of which ge was the world leader since its organization in 1935. He was 59 years old.

Death occurred a few hours after Jabotinsky had reviewed a parade of the campers, members of the Zionist-Revisionist youth organization known as Brith Trumpeldor. The Zionist leader had come to the camp to spend the weekend.

Funeral services will be held Tuesday at noon from Schwartz’s Funeral Parlor, 152 Second Avenue. Burial will take place the same day at the New Montefiore Cemetery, Long Island, in the section belonging to the New zionist Nordar circle."

Surviving the leader are his widow, Jeanne, who is in London, and a son, Eri, a civil engineer in Palestine. Eri is serving a term of one year at the Acre concentration camp, administratively imposed because of his role in aiding extra-legal Jewish immigrants to enter Palestine.

For more than two decades the stormy petrel of the Zionist movement, Jabotinsky was visiting the United States to stimulate interest in the raising of a Jewish army to fight with the Allies. He had been here since March 13 and only recently addressed a mass meeting at the Manhattan Center, during which he predicted that a "co-belligerent" Jewish army would soon be fighting as an ally of Britain under the British army’s command.

Just a few days before he died, it was revealed, Jabotinsky had decided to return shortly to England to resume negotiations with the Government for creation of the projected army, which he envisioned as numbering 100,000 Jews from all parts of the world.

The presidency of the New Zionist Organizaton, in announcing Jabotinsky’s death, declared its determination to "continue the fight until the full redemption of Israel as envisioned by Jabotinsky."

Jabotinsky, although Russian-born, was technically a "man without a country." Usually, when asked his nationality, he described himself as "the Wanderign Jew." He travelled on a Nansen passport. He was born in Odessa, Russia, October 18, 1880, and was educated in Russia, Italy and Switzerland. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in Russia, buy never practiced law, choosing instead to follow a career as a writer, orator and Zionist leader.

As a writer, Jabotinsky first made a reputation during the early days of the World War when he traveled as a war correspondent for a leading Moscow newspaper. His essays on the Near east situation were regarded brilliant and received wide attention.

In addition to his journalistic activities, Jabotinsky gained renown as a writer of English, French, Hebrew, Italian, Yiddish and Russian prose. Among his best-known works are a Hebrew translation of Dante and Russian translations of the works of the late Hebrew poet laureate, Chaim Nachman Bialik. He also collaborated in the compilation of the first Hebrew atlas.

but it was as a Zionist leader and organizer of the Jewish Legion, which helped Allenby wrest Palestine from Turkey in the world War, that Jabotinsky gained his greatest measure of fame. He organized the Legion in 1916 and enlisted in it as a private, later earning promotion to the rank of lieutenant.

It was in connection with creation of the Legion that Jabotinsky broke for the first time with the World Zionist Organization. He was excluded from the W.Z.O. in 1915 because he advocated formation of the Legion, contrary to the official Zionist policy of neutrality in the World War at that time.

Jabotinsky was decorated for his services with the Legion, and remained in Palestine after the war ended. Together with other demobilized Legionnaires he organized a self-defense corps to cope with threatening Arab violence and, after the Jerusalem out-breaks of 1920, he was sentenced to 15 years penal servitude. Protests in many parts of the world, which were echoed in the House of Commons, resulted in quashing of the sentence after he had served three and a half months of it.

Following this episode in his career, Jabotinsky returned to England in 1920 and became a member of the World Zionist Executive, entrusted with the portfolio of propa ganda and the Palestine Foundation Fund, Zionist colonization agency. Jabotinsky remained within the World Zionist Organization as leader of the dissident Revisionist faction until 1935, when he organized the New Zionist Organization because of disagreement over Zionist labor policies and the official Zionist line toward the British policy on Palestine.

The leading protagonist of a more militant opposition to British policy, Jabotinsky had been barred from Palestine since 1930, when he gave testimony damaging to the British Administration before the Shaw Commission, which was investigating the Arab anti-Jewish disorders of 1929.

Since the outbreak of the present European war, however, while still critical of the British Palestine policy, Jabotinsky had been advocating cooperation with England,

as evidenced by his proposal for creation of a separate Jewish army. Early last month he revealed that he had cabled instructions to the Palestine New Zionist Organization, in the event of "actual war conditions," to " leave responsibility to the majority and safeguard the Jewish community’s unity."

Jabotinsky’s program, as enunciated in numerous addresses and in testimony before the Royal Commission during its London hearings following the 1936 Palestine disorders, called for a Jewish State on both sides of the Jordan immediate transportation of masses of Jewish immigrants to Palestine to save them from persecution in Europe.

Addressing a convention of the New Zionist Organization in Prague two years ago, Jabotinsky declared that the whole of Palestine, on both sindes of the Jordan, had to become an independent Jewish State which would then decide its future connection with Britain. He rejected partition of Palestine, which had been proposed by the Royal Commission, as "death to Zionism."

"Mass emigration," he said at that time, "is not only a Jewish question but a world problem. The future of Palestine is not the private concern of the Mandatory (Britain) but of all states interested in the affliction of the Jews, and which favor Zionism."

In his recent New York addresses, Jabotinsky advocated creation of a united Jewish front through establishment of a world Jewish headquarters supervising all other bodies.