Funeral services for Alex Rose, a veteran labor leader and powerhouse in New York State politics, will be held tomorrow. He died yesterday at the age of 78. Rose was the president of the United Hatters, Cap and Millinery Workers International Union since 1950 and had been its vice-president since 1927. In 1944, Rose founded the Liberal Party after the Communists gained control of the American Labor Party and built it into a major electoral force in New York City, state and nation.
In 1923, at the invitation of David Ben Gurion, a group of Jewish labor leaders in this country founded the “Gewerischaiteh,” a committee to help the fledgling Histadrut in Palestine by sending tools to the Jewish workers there. Rose was one of the key persons in the founding of this committee which later became known as the National Committee for Labor Israel. Rose was a charter member of the committee.
Born Olesh Royz in Warsaw, he was sent to the United States at the age of 15. He became active in the Labor Zionist movement and in 1918 he enlisted in the Jewish Legion. He returned to the U.S. two years later, Rose’s daughter, Mrs. Carmi Schwartz, moved with her family last year from Scarsdale, N.Y., to Israel.
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.
