An impressive eulogy of Dr. Chaim Weizmann was delivered today at the United Nations General Assembly by Ambassador Abba Eban, head of the Israeli delegation, who expressed “deep gratitude” for the homage paid by the Assembly yesterday to the memory of the President of Israel who, he said, “is being laid to rest at this very hour.”
Mr. Eban spoke of President Weizmann as “the embodiment in modern times of the kingly and prophetic tradition which once flourished in Israel and became the most abiding source of light and redemption for successive generations of men.”
“He led Israel for 40 years,” the Israeli delegate said, “through a wilderness of martyrdom and anguish, of savage oppression and frustrated hope, across the sharpest agony which has ever beset the life of any people; and at the end of his days he entered in triumph upon his due inheritance of honor as the first President of Israel.”
Mr. Eban’s voice was full of emotion as he paid this final tribute to his late chief on the podium of the United Nations. “His Presidency,” he said, “symbolized the swift journey of the Jewish people, in this its most awesome decade, from the horrors and depredations of European slaughterhouses and Oriental ghettoes to the shelter and freedom of the sovereign state securely established in the international family.
“During years of deep darkness and little hope our people looked with pride and longing upon his erect and majestic bearing, his dignity of mind and spirit, his scientific intellect refined and ordered as a cultivated garden; and his profound moral influence in every free country upon the best minds and hearts of his generation.
“In all our enterprises, in our effort to preserve ancient moral values in moder scientific truths, in our national ambition and international pride we were uplifted by the presence of his revered and paternal figure in our midst. ” Mr. Eban thanked all delegates who had offered their condolences.
“We are sorely bereaved,” he said, “but we may serve the Hebrew tradition worthily if we can establish the life of our Founder-President as the standard which Israel should aspire to obtain in all the expressions of its national spirit, as deed and thought and word. The waves of sympathy and respect which flow abundantly from all corners of the earth will sustain our people in this solemn hour of remembrance and grief, ” Mr. Eban concluded.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
