Dr. Gergel Leading Authority on Jewish Economic Life in Russia and Prominent Joint Distribution Comm

Soon after returning to his home here from a stay in America, Dr. Nahum Gergel, one of the greatest authorities on Jewish economic life in Russia, died here to-day of a heart attack. Dr. Gergel, who was only 44 years of age, was the Director of the Yekopo, the Big Jewish relief organisation in Russia, “Yevreiskie Komitet Pomoshtschi”, which was founded in Russia at the beginning of the Great War to provide sanitary and other relief among the Jewish war victims and refugees who were driven from their homes by the Russian army. It also did a great deal of work among the pogrom victims at the time of the Civil War and the pogroms in the Ukraine in 1918-20. Many members of his own family were killed in the pogrom in Kiev. He left Russia soon after, the Yekopo finally being submerged by the Communist Idgeskom, and was at the European headquarters of the Joint Distribution Committee in Berlin, where he was responsible for the literary work on Jewish economic life in Russia, on which subject he also wrote a book. He was also a prominent worker in the Jewish Health Organisation Oze, and his last visit to America was in the interests of the projected Yiddish Encyclopaedia.