Funeral services were held here yesterday for Dr. Jacob Avigdor, eldest rabbi of the Ashkenazic Jewish community, Nidche Israel, in this country, and one-time chief rabbi at Buenos Aires, who died here, aged 72.
Born in Poland, Rabbi Avigdor, who earned his doctorate in philosophy at Lwow University in 1931, was spiritual leader of the Jewish community in Drohobycz-Boryslaw, in eastern Galicia, from 1920 to 1940. During World War II, he was a major in the Polish army, later served as a chaplain in England and in Europe.
He was incarcerated at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and referred to his survival as "a miracle." He has written many scholarly works in five languages — Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish, German and Spanish. For a while, after serving in Buenos Aires, he was head of Yeshiva Rabbi Solomon Kluger, in New York, and came to this country in 1950. His major literary works dealt with rabbinic and Jewish philosophy.
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.
