Yehuda Hellman, for 25 years executive vice president of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, died of a heart attack Saturday in a St. Louis, Missouri, hospital. He was 66 years old and lived in Manhattan.
Hellman was delivering a speech to the semiannual meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations at the Doubletree Hotel in Chesterfield, a suburb of St. Louis, when he suffered the attack. Efforts to revive him failed, and he died shortly afterwards at St. John’s Hospital in Chesterfield.
Born in Riga, Latvia, Hellman was a graduate of the American University in Beirut. He worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Beirut, and Damascus for various publications, including The Jerusalem Post.
A leading authority on the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy, Hellman conferred with numerous foreign dignitaries, including the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. He met President Hosni Mubarak on several occasions in his capacity as executive vice chairman of the Presidents Conference, the umbrella group of the 40 largest American Jewish religious and secular bodies.
Hellman was also a member of the International Steering Committee of the World Conference on Soviet Jewry and was a former secretary general of the World Conference of Jewish Organizations and Communities on Soviet Jewry.
There will be no Daily News Bulletin dated May 26, Memorial Day, a postal holiday.
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