Funeral services were held yesterday for Ben Zion Goldberg, the noted American author and journalist, who died Friday of a heart attack at the age of 78. His death occurred two days after he arrived here from New York as a guest of the Histadrut. He was buried in the writers’ section of Kiryat Shaul Cemetery near here. Mr. Goldberg was eulogized by Yitzhak Ben Aharaon, Histadrut secretary. as a friend of the union movement and of working people.
Born near Vilna, he came to the United States in 1907 and received a doctorate in philosophy from Columbia University in 1920. Mr. Goldberg was a staff member of the Jewish Day-Journal, a Yiddish daily which ceased publication in Dec. 1971. He was its managing editor from 1924 to 1940 and wrote a column for the newspaper for 52 years. Mr. Goldberg; who considered himself a Marxist but not a Communist, made several trips to the Soviet Union and wrote several books on Soviet Jewry. A critic of the Stalinist regime, he nevertheless opposed the cold war approach to the Soviet Union.
He was active in establishing the Sholom Aleichem House Library in Tel Aviv and at the time of his death was a columnist for The Jewish Week and The American Examiner a member of the editorial board of Israel Horizons and a columnist for Al Hamishmar. During his decades as a journalist. Mr. Goldberg was a correspondent for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Toronto Star Weekly and the New Republic. Mr. Goldberg, whose real name was Ben Zion Waife, was married to Marie Rabinowitz, the daughter of Sholom Aleichem. She was at his side when he died.
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.
