Thousands of Jews here, joined by representatives of the Governments of the United States, Britain and Israel, tonight paid solemn tribute to the late President Chaim Weizmann of Israel at a public meeting in Carnegie Hall arranged by the American Zionist Council.
President Truman, in a message to the meeting said, : “Mankind has lost an able leader in the death of Chaim Weizmann, Israel’s first President. His devotion to the establishment of a homeland for Jewish people, both before its realization and as the head of the new government has brought him the respect and gratitude of millions. “He was a man of wisdom and I was honored to known him.”
Principal speakers at the meeting included: Abba S. Eban, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States; Sir Gladwyn Jebb, permanent representative of the United Kingdom to the United Nations; Ambassador Benjamin V. Cohen, member of the U.S. mission to the United Nations; Louis Lipsky, chairman of the American Zionist Council; Dr. Nahum Goldmann, chairman of the Jewish Agency; Edward M. M. Warburg, general chairman of the United Jewish Appeal; and Mrs. Moses P. Epstein, vice chairman of the Zionist Council.
Ambassador Cohen paid tribute to Dr. Weizmann’s “immortal accomplishments” for his people and for mankind. “So completely did he identify himself with his people that the statesmen of the world came to regard his voice as the very voice of Israel,” Ambassador Cohen said. “In him they saw the tragedies, the travails. the strivings, the hope and the promise of the Jewish people.”
Sir Gladwyn spoke of England’s pride in the fact that Dr. Weizmann had worked there for many years and referred to Dr. Weizmann’s “great services” for the British, in particular his World War I discovery of a new process for producing acetone. He recalled that Dr. Weizmann’s younger son died on active service in the RAF during World War II.
Ambassador Eban declared: “In every moral and spiritual sense, Chaim Weizmann represented Israel as if it were a world power, and behold, the world took him seriously and responded to that representation. We shall serve the Hebrew tradition worthily and we shall show comprehension of the meaning of this life which has now passed if we represent the State of Israel as a great power, in every moral and spiritual sense which are the true essences of power.”
Mr. Lipsky described Dr. Weizmann’s relationship to the American Zionist movement and spoke of his visit to this country in 1921. Dr. Weizmann raised the prestige of the Zionist cause in American life and made Zionism “an ideal sympathetic to men of intellect and liberal ways of life,” Mr. Lipsky said.
Mr. Warburg said that Dr. Weizmann was “the real Foreign Minister” for all Zionists and the Zionist movement. “He was not only their leader; he was their representative to the outside world, and he was the one who convinced not only the already convinced, but those who stood skeptically aside.”
Dr. Goldmann called Dr. Weizmann the symbol of “the full concept of Zionism, not merely as a political, but also as a moral and creative movement. He wanted Israel not only as a State for and of the Jews but as a Jewish State, as an instrument for the implementation of the eternal ideal of Jewish civilization,” Dr. Goldmann pointed out.
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.
