The Zuckerman Family

THE ZUCKERMAN FAMILY OF KURENITZ
A link to Herzl
By Greer Fay Cashman

(April 25) - Even some of Nomi Zuckerman's close friends do not know of her involvement in illegal immigration to the Jewish homeland in the 1940s. But if you ask her, she will tell you all about her own, and her parents', contibutions to the nation's origins.

Artist, poet and translator Nomi Zuckerman usually spends Israel Independence Days with friends in Jerusalem. The gatherings are typical of those in which veteran Israelis sing old campfire songs and swap anecdotes about where they were and what they were doing in the 1940s.

Zuckerman, an octogenarian, is usually content just to listen. But one year she was moved to talk about her experiences in Europe rounding up Jewish refugees for illegal immigration to the Jewish homeland when it was under British rule.

Afterwards the people who drove her home remarked en route: "We never knew all those things about you, Nomi. We never knew what you did."

To which Zuckerman's response was: "You never asked."

A person's suffering is sometimes etched into his face or eternally reflected in the expression in his eyes - but no one's history is written on his forehead. So it often happens that we are in the presence of great achievers of whose accomplishments we remain ignorant because we never ask and they never think it necessary to supply the information.

If people are surprised to learn that the genteel, American-born Zuckerman - a dog breeder and founding president of the Israel Airedale Terriers Kennel Club - worked with refugees in war-torn Europe and was subsequently part of Israel's first diplomatic mission to Austria, they are even more astonished to discover that she was in Jerusalem at the opening ceremony of the Hebrew University in 1925.

Zuckerman is a member of an exceedingly Zionist family of pioneers and participants in a series of milestone events.

The younger daughter of Baruch and Nina Zuckerman - who each had a profound influence on Zionism in America - and the sister of Avivah Zuckerman, a gifted, prize-winning poet, Hagana activist and later a world-renowned Hebrew University professor of parasitology, Nomi Zuckerman has met with most of the great Zionist leaders from Ben-Gurion on down.

When the family came to Palestine in 1925, it was with the intention of settling permanently, but Avivah took ill, a factor which forced the family to return to New York where she could be properly treated. It was not until 1932 that the Zuckermans finally made aliya, and Avivah who had been studying at Hunter College in New York enrolled at the Hebrew University, becoming one of its first students of bacteriology. While his wife and daughters remained in Palestine, Baruch Zuckerman's many activities as an emissary precluded him from residing in Israel until his retirement in 1956.

Born in 1887 in the hassidic village of Kurenitz in the Vilna area, Baruch Zuckerman was the son of a peddler who journeyed to neighboring villages to sell his wares. The family was so poor that his mother also had to work to supplement his father's meager income. The young Baruch became a nomad early in life. His parents wanted him to study and he wandered from rabbi to rabbi and yeshiva to yeshiva picking up knowledge - almost by way of apprenticeship for the traveling and the speech-making he would be doing in later life.

When Baruch was 15, he began to feel the first stirrings of Zionism. He became truly enamored with this fledgling ideology of the Jewish people in August 1903 when he had the privilege of hearing Theodor Herzl speak in Vilna.

A year later, Baruch Zuckerman aged all of 16, arrived in America, where he initially worked in a sweat shop in New York's garment district for the princely sum of $2 a week. It was there that he learned to put together sleeves and cuffs for men's shirts Later, he graduated to piece work. But his heart was not in the job.

WHEN HERZL died in July 1904, Baruch was devastated. All he could think of was the great loss to the Jewish people and he feared that without Herzl the Zionist Movement would fall asunder. He went rushing to consult with like-minded friends about what could be done to save it.

While Baruch had been propelled by an uncle towards the garment district, his father and older brother had gone into the scrap business. When his brother realized that there was no future for Baruch in the rag trade, he decided to set him up in an enterprise of his own and put a down payment on a candy store in Baruch's name. Baruch didn't have a head for business, and the candy store held out for only nine months. In the meantime, it proved to be a popular venue for ideologists who gathered there to vent their Zionist fervor. They all belonged to transplanted Pinsk and Vilna branches of Po'alei Zion as did Baruch himself. After a regular work day they would gather at the candy store and spout Zionist philosophy.

As his relationship with the candy store was drawing to a close, Baruch was elected a delegate to the founding convention of Po'alei Zion of America that took place on May 1, 1905. It spelled the beginning of his career as a servant of his people. As a key member of the Labor Zionist Movement of America he was both a formulator of policy and a major exponent of that policy.

Passionately committed to social welfare, he dreamt of uniting it with Zionism. The Po'alei Zion Movement enabled him to do so. He was executive director of the People's Relief Committee from 1915 to 1924 when it disbanded, and accompanied Herbert Hoover and investment banker Herbert Lehman to Poland to bring food and clothing to survivors of the First World War.

During that war, he helped to organize the Jewish Legion and was also instrumental in setting up the American Jewish Congress. He was also editor of Yiddishe Kempfer, and a leading figure in Farband and the Histadrut campaign. In later years, he was elected Po'alei Zion representative to the Executive of the Jewish Agency in America and to the Executive of the World Jewish Congress. He was also president of the Labor Zionist Organization of America. A gifted writer and speaker, as well as an editor and journalist, he was one of the chief spokesman for American Po'alei Zion around the world.

Baruch Zuckerman and Kiev-born Nina Avrunin came to America within a year of each other and were introduced by Nina's brother Gershon Avrunin. After their marriage, she busied herself with the women's arm of Po'alei Zion and thus became one of the founders of Pioneer Women, she served for several years as the organization's national secretary before Pioneer Women decided to upgrade its highest office bearers to the rank of president. As national secretary she travelled across America lecturing to women's groups and forming new branches.

After the Zuckermans moved to Jerusalem, where Nomi attended the Gymnasia Rehavia, their house became a meeting place for all the who's who of the Zionist Movement. Golda Meir, or Meyerson, as she was called then, had to go back to America with her two children because her daughter Sara had kidney trouble for which suitable treatment was not available in Palestine. Her husband Morris Meyerson, who stayed behind, moved in with the Zuckermans.

"Everyone thought Morris Meyerson was our father because our father was never home," recalls Nomi Zuckerman.

In 1937, Nomi Zuckerman graduated high school and went to study at a teacher's seminary in Tel Aviv. Golda Meir had already returned so Nomi moved in with Golda's family and helped to run the household, "although Golda baked the Shabbat cake."

Nomi Zuckerman is still considered a member of Golda's family and is always invited to state-sponsored memorial services for the former prime minister.

In August 1939, on the eve of Hitler's invasion into Poland, both Baruch and Nina Zuckerman were delegates to the 21st Zionist Congress in Geneva. They took Nomi with them by way of a belated high school graduation gift. The Congress plenum decided that given the circumstances, Baruch and Nina Zuckerman were of more value to the Zionist movement operating from America, than from Jerusalem. So they headed back to New York, taking Nomi with them. She spent the major part of the war years studying - first at Columbia University, then at the Tyler School of Fine Arts before returning to Jerusalem with her parents at the end of 1945.

During the war years, Baruch Zuckerman became one of the proponents of Yad Vashem. The idea of establishing a Holocaust memorial in Palestine, conceived while the war was still raging, was an immediate response to reports of the mass murder of Jews in countries occupied by the Nazis. It was first proposed in September 1942, at a board meeting of the Jewish National Fund, by Mordecai Shenhavi, a member of Kibbutz Mishmar Ha'emek.

In August 1945, the plan was discussed in greater detail at a Zionist meeting in London where it was decided to set up a provisional board, made up of the Zionist leaders with David Remez as chairman, Shlomo Zalman Shragai, Baruch Zuckerman, and Shenhavi.

In February 1946, Yad Vashem opened an office in Jerusalem and a branch office in Tel Aviv and in June of that year, convened its first plenary session. In July 1947, the First Conference on Holocaust Research was held at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where further plans were made for Yad Vashem. However the outbreak in May 1948 of the War of Independence, brought almost all Yad Vashem operations for two years.

While still in high school, Nomi had been a member of the communications division of the Hagana and Avivah had been her commanding officer. In 1947, the Hagana sent Nomi to Austria, supposedly as a member of the Jewish Agency's education board which was running a variety of educational programs for refugee children. What she was doing in fact, was rounding up adult refugees to bring them illegally to Palestine.

Other than Zuckerman, all the members of her group had travelled on Palestine passports issued by the British Mandate, which became pass* after Israel's declaration of statehood. Zuckerman was the only one who could move around freely because she had a US passport.

She continued to gravitate between Austria and Germany until 1950 and actually stamped the first Israeli passports - including her own - of the Israeli group in Austria. She also issued travel documents to refugees. She had neither diplomatic nor secretarial training. "I didn't know that when you typed a letter you had to have copies. In Salzburg, I learned to use carbon paper."

Thrilled as she was to be helping some of the remnants of world Jewry to reach the Jewish homeland, she was even more excited - perhaps as her father's daughter - to be involved in negotiations to transfer Herzl's remains to Jerusalem. Together with Kurt Levin, the Israeli Consul in Salzburg, she attended the transfer ceremony on August 16, 1949. It was almost 46 years to the day since her father had heard Herzl speak in Vilna.

In the interim, Herzl's prophecy had come true: The Jewish people had their own old-new state and the father of the Zionist movement who among others, had inspired all of the Zuckermans, was finally going home.

A link to Herzl
By Greer Fay Cashman(April 25) - Even some of Nomi Zuckerman's close friends do not know of her involvement in illegal immigration to the Jewish homeland in the 1940s. But if you ask her, she will tell you all about her own, and her parents', contibutions to the nation's origins.

Afterwards the people who drove her home remarked en route: "We never knew all those things about you, Nomi. We never knew what you did."

To which Zuckerman's response was: "You never asked."

Zuckerman is a member of an exceedingly Zionist family of pioneers and participants in a series of milestone events.

A gifted writer and speaker, as well as an editor and journalist, he was one of the chief spokesman for American Po'alei Zion around the world.

Baruch Zuckerman and Kiev-born Nina Avrunin came to America within a year of each other and were introduced by Nina's brother Gershon Avrunin. After
their marriage, she busied herself with the women's arm of Po'alei Zion and thus became one of the founders of Pioneer Women, she served for several years as the organization's national secretary before Pioneer Women decided to upgrade its highest office bearers to the rank of president. As national secretary she travelled across America lecturing to women's groups and forming new branches.

After the Zuckermans moved to Jerusalem, where Nomi attended the Gymnasia Rehavia, their house became a meeting place for all the who's who of
the Zionist Movement. Golda Meir, or Meyerson, as she was called then, had to go back to America with her two children because her daughter Sara had
kidney trouble for which suitable treatment was not available in Palestine. Her husband Morris Meyerson, who stayed behind, moved in with the Zuckermans.

"Everyone thought Morris Meyerson was our father because our father was never home," recalls Nomi Zuckerman.

Nomi Zuckerman is still considered a member of Golda's family and is always invited to state-sponsored memorial services for the former prime minister.

In August 1939, on the eve of Hitler's invasion into Poland, both Baruch and Nina Zuckerman were delegates to the 21st Zionist Congress in Geneva.
They took Nomi with them by way of a belated high school graduation gift. The Congress plenum decided that given the circumstances, Baruch and Nina
Zuckerman were of more value to the Zionist movement operating from America, than from Jerusalem. So they headed back to New York, taking Nomi with them. She spent the major part of the war years studying - first at Columbia University, then at the Tyler School of Fine Arts before returning to Jerusalem with her parents at the end of 1945.

During the war years, Baruch Zuckerman became one of the proponents of Yad Vashem. The idea of establishing a Holocaust memorial in Palestine,
conceived while the war was still raging, was an immediate response to reports of the mass murder of Jews in countries occupied by the Nazis. It was first proposed in September 1942, at a board meeting of the Jewish National Fund, by Mordecai Shenhavi, a member of Kibbutz Mishmar Ha'emek.

In August 1945, the plan was discussed in greater detail at a Zionist meeting in London where it was decided to set up a provisional board, made up
of the Zionist leaders with David Remez as chairman, Shlomo Zalman Shragai, Baruch Zuckerman, and Shenhavi.

She continued to gravitate between Austria and Germany until 1950 and actually stamped the first Israeli passports - including her own - of the
Israeli group in Austria. She also issued travel documents to refugees. She had neither diplomatic nor secretarial training. "I didn't know that when you typed a letter you had to have copies. In Salzburg, I learned to use carbon paper."

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THE ZUCKERMAN FAMILY OF KURENITZ A link to Herzl By Greer Fay Cashman (April 25) - Even some of Nomi Zuckerman's close friends do not know of her involvement in illegal immigration to the Jewish homeland in the 1940s. But if you ask her, she will tell you all about her own, and her parents', contibutions to the nation's origins. Artist, poet and translator Nomi Zuckerman usually spends Israel Independence Days with friends in Jerusalem. The gatherings are typical of those in which veteran Israelis sing old campfire songs and swap anecdotes about where they were and what they were doing in the 1940s. Zuckerman, an octogenarian, is usually content just to listen. But one year she was moved to talk about her experiences in Europe rounding up Jewish refugees for illegal immigration to the Jewish homeland when it was under British rule. Afterwards the people who drove her home remarked en route: "We never knew all those things about you, Nomi. We never knew what you did." To which Zuckerman's response was: "You never asked." A person's suffering is sometimes etched into his face or eternally reflected in the expression in his eyes - but no one's history is written on his forehead. So it often happens that we are in the presence of great achievers of whose accomplishments we remain ignorant because we never ask and they never think it necessary to supply the information. If people are surprised to learn that the genteel, American-born Zuckerman - a dog breeder and founding president of the Israel Airedale Terriers Kennel Club - worked with refugees in war-torn Europe and was subsequently part of Israel's first diplomatic mission to Austria, they are even more astonished to discover that she was in Jerusalem at the opening ceremony of the Hebrew University in 1925. Zuckerman is a member of an exceedingly Zionist family of pioneers and participants in a series of milestone events. The younger daughter of Baruch and Nina Zuckerman - who each had a profound influence on Zionism in America - and the sister of Avivah Zuckerman, a gifted, prize-winning poet, Hagana activist and later a world-renowned Hebrew University professor of parasitology, Nomi Zuckerman has met with most of the great Zionist leaders from Ben-Gurion on down. When the family came to Palestine in 1925, it was with the intention of settling permanently, but Avivah took ill, a factor which forced the family to return to New York where she could be properly treated. It was not until 1932 that the Zuckermans finally made aliya, and Avivah who had been studying at Hunter College in New York enrolled at the Hebrew University, becoming one of its first students of bacteriology. While his wife and daughters remained in Palestine, Baruch Zuckerman's many activities as an emissary precluded him from residing in Israel until his retirement in 1956. Born in 1887 in the hassidic village of Kurenitz in the Vilna area, Baruch Zuckerman was the son of a peddler who journeyed to neighboring villages to sell his wares. The family was so poor that his mother also had to work to supplement his father's meager income. The young Baruch became a nomad early in life. His parents wanted him to study and he wandered from rabbi to rabbi and yeshiva to yeshiva picking up knowledge - almost by way of apprenticeship for the traveling and the speech-making he would be doing in later life. When Baruch was 15, he began to feel the first stirrings of Zionism. He became truly enamored with this fledgling ideology of the Jewish people in August 1903 when he had the privilege of hearing Theodor Herzl speak in Vilna. A year later, Baruch Zuckerman aged all of 16, arrived in America, where he initially worked in a sweat shop in New York's garment district for the princely sum of $2 a week. It was there that he learned to put together sleeves and cuffs for men's shirts Later, he graduated to piece work. But his heart was not in the job. WHEN HERZL died in July 1904, Baruch was devastated. All he could think of was the great loss to the Jewish people and he feared that without Herzl the Zionist Movement would fall asunder. He went rushing to consult with like-minded friends about what could be done to save it. While Baruch had been propelled by an uncle towards the garment district, his father and older brother had gone into the scrap business. When his brother realized that there was no future for Baruch in the rag trade, he decided to set him up in an enterprise of his own and put a down payment on a candy store in Baruch's name. Baruch didn't have a head for business, and the candy store held out for only nine months. In the meantime, it proved to be a popular venue for ideologists who gathered there to vent their Zionist fervor. They all belonged to transplanted Pinsk and Vilna branches of Po'alei Zion as did Baruch himself. After a regular work day they would gather at the candy store and spout Zionist philosophy. As his relationship with the candy store was drawing to a close, Baruch was elected a delegate to the founding convention of Po'alei Zion of America that took place on May 1, 1905. It spelled the beginning of his career as a servant of his people. As a key member of the Labor Zionist Movement of America he was both a formulator of policy and a major exponent of that policy. Passionately committed to social welfare, he dreamt of uniting it with Zionism. The Po'alei Zion Movement enabled him to do so. He was executive director of the People's Relief Committee from 1915 to 1924 when it disbanded, and accompanied Herbert Hoover and investment banker Herbert Lehman to Poland to bring food and clothing to survivors of the First World War. During that war, he helped to organize the Jewish Legion and was also instrumental in setting up the American Jewish Congress. He was also editor of Yiddishe Kempfer, and a leading figure in Farband and the Histadrut campaign. In later years, he was elected Po'alei Zion representative to the Executive of the Jewish Agency in America and to the Executive of the World Jewish Congress. He was also president of the Labor Zionist Organization of America. A gifted writer and speaker, as well as an editor and journalist, he was one of the chief spokesman for American Po'alei Zion around the world. Baruch Zuckerman and Kiev-born Nina Avrunin came to America within a year of each other and were introduced by Nina's brother Gershon Avrunin. After their marriage, she busied herself with the women's arm of Po'alei Zion and thus became one of the founders of Pioneer Women, she served for several years as the organization's national secretary before Pioneer Women decided to upgrade its highest office bearers to the rank of president. As national secretary she travelled across America lecturing to women's groups and forming new branches. After the Zuckermans moved to Jerusalem, where Nomi attended the Gymnasia Rehavia, their house became a meeting place for all the who's who of the Zionist Movement. Golda Meir, or Meyerson, as she was called then, had to go back to America with her two children because her daughter Sara had kidney trouble for which suitable treatment was not available in Palestine. Her husband Morris Meyerson, who stayed behind, moved in with the Zuckermans. "Everyone thought Morris Meyerson was our father because our father was never home," recalls Nomi Zuckerman. In 1937, Nomi Zuckerman graduated high school and went to study at a teacher's seminary in Tel Aviv. Golda Meir had already returned so Nomi moved in with Golda's family and helped to run the household, "although Golda baked the Shabbat cake." Nomi Zuckerman is still considered a member of Golda's family and is always invited to state-sponsored memorial services for the former prime minister. In August 1939, on the eve of Hitler's invasion into Poland, both Baruch and Nina Zuckerman were delegates to the 21st Zionist Congress in Geneva. They took Nomi with them by way of a belated high school graduation gift. The Congress plenum decided that given the circumstances, Baruch and Nina Zuckerman were of more value to the Zionist movement operating from America, than from Jerusalem. So they headed back to New York, taking Nomi with them. She spent the major part of the war years studying - first at Columbia University, then at the Tyler School of Fine Arts before returning to Jerusalem with her parents at the end of 1945. During the war years, Baruch Zuckerman became one of the proponents of Yad Vashem. The idea of establishing a Holocaust memorial in Palestine, conceived while the war was still raging, was an immediate response to reports of the mass murder of Jews in countries occupied by the Nazis. It was first proposed in September 1942, at a board meeting of the Jewish National Fund, by Mordecai Shenhavi, a member of Kibbutz Mishmar Ha'emek. In August 1945, the plan was discussed in greater detail at a Zionist meeting in London where it was decided to set up a provisional board, made up of the Zionist leaders with David Remez as chairman, Shlomo Zalman Shragai, Baruch Zuckerman, and Shenhavi. In February 1946, Yad Vashem opened an office in Jerusalem and a branch office in Tel Aviv and in June of that year, convened its first plenary session. In July 1947, the First Conference on Holocaust Research was held at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where further plans were made for Yad Vashem. However the outbreak in May 1948 of the War of Independence, brought almost all Yad Vashem operations for two years. While still in high school, Nomi had been a member of the communications division of the Hagana and Avivah had been her commanding officer. In 1947, the Hagana sent Nomi to Austria, supposedly as a member of the Jewish Agency's education board which was running a variety of educational programs for refugee children. What she was doing in fact, was rounding up adult refugees to bring them illegally to Palestine. Other than Zuckerman, all the members of her group had travelled on Palestine passports issued by the British Mandate, which became pass* after Israel's declaration of statehood. Zuckerman was the only one who could move around freely because she had a US passport. She continued to gravitate between Austria and Germany until 1950 and actually stamped the first Israeli passports - including her own - of the Israeli group in Austria. She also issued travel documents to refugees. She had neither diplomatic nor secretarial training. "I didn't know that when you typed a letter you had to have copies. In Salzburg, I learned to use carbon paper." Thrilled as she was to be helping some of the remnants of world Jewry to reach the Jewish homeland, she was even more excited - perhaps as her father's daughter - to be involved in negotiations to transfer Herzl's remains to Jerusalem. Together with Kurt Levin, the Israeli Consul in Salzburg, she attended the transfer ceremony on August 16, 1949. It was almost 46 years to the day since her father had heard Herzl speak in Vilna. In the interim, Herzl's prophecy had come true: The Jewish people had their own old-new state and the father of the Zionist movement who among others, had inspired all of the Zuckermans, was finally going home. A link to Herzl By Greer Fay Cashman(April 25) - Even some of Nomi Zuckerman's close friends do not know of her involvement in illegal immigration to the Jewish homeland in the 1940s. But if you ask her, she will tell you all about her own, and her parents', contibutions to the nation's origins. Artist, poet and translator Nomi Zuckerman usually spends Israel Independence Days with friends in Jerusalem. The gatherings are typical of those in which veteran Israelis sing old campfire songs and swap anecdotes about where they were and what they were doing in the 1940s. Zuckerman, an octogenarian, is usually content just to listen. But one year she was moved to talk about her experiences in Europe rounding up Jewish refugees for illegal immigration to the Jewish homeland when it was under British rule. Afterwards the people who drove her home remarked en route: "We never knew all those things about you, Nomi. We never knew what you did." To which Zuckerman's response was: "You never asked." A person's suffering is sometimes etched into his face or eternally reflected in the expression in his eyes - but no one's history is written on his forehead. So it often happens that we are in the presence of great achievers of whose accomplishments we remain ignorant because we never ask and they never think it necessary to supply the information. If people are surprised to learn that the genteel, American-born Zuckerman - a dog breeder and founding president of the Israel Airedale Terriers Kennel Club - worked with refugees in war-torn Europe and was subsequently part of Israel's first diplomatic mission to Austria, they are even more astonished to discover that she was in Jerusalem at the opening ceremony of the Hebrew University in 1925. Zuckerman is a member of an exceedingly Zionist family of pioneers and participants in a series of milestone events. The younger daughter of Baruch and Nina Zuckerman - who each had a profound influence on Zionism in America - and the sister of Avivah Zuckerman, a gifted, prize-winning poet, Hagana activist and later a world-renowned Hebrew University professor of parasitology, Nomi Zuckerman has met with most of the great Zionist leaders from Ben-Gurion on down. When the family came to Palestine in 1925, it was with the intention of settling permanently, but Avivah took ill, a factor which forced the family to return to New York where she could be properly treated. It was not until 1932 that the Zuckermans finally made aliya, and Avivah who had been studying at Hunter College in New York enrolled at the Hebrew University, becoming one of its first students of bacteriology. While his wife and daughters remained in Palestine, Baruch Zuckerman's many activities as an emissary precluded him from residing in Israel until his retirement in 1956. Born in 1887 in the hassidic village of Kurenitz in the Vilna area, Baruch Zuckerman was the son of a peddler who journeyed to neighboring villages to sell his wares. The family was so poor that his mother also had to work to supplement his father's meager income. The young Baruch became a nomad early in life. His parents wanted him to study and he wandered from rabbi to rabbi and yeshiva to yeshiva picking up knowledge - almost by way of apprenticeship for the traveling and the speech-making he would be doing in later life. When Baruch was 15, he began to feel the first stirrings of Zionism. He became truly enamored with this fledgling ideology of the Jewish people in August 1903 when he had the privilege of hearing Theodor Herzl speak in Vilna. A year later, Baruch Zuckerman aged all of 16, arrived in America, where he initially worked in a sweat shop in New York's garment district for the princely sum of $2 a week. It was there that he learned to put together sleeves and cuffs for men's shirts Later, he graduated to piece work. But his heart was not in the job. WHEN HERZL died in July 1904, Baruch was devastated. All he could think of was the great loss to the Jewish people and he feared that without Herzl the Zionist Movement would fall asunder. He went rushing to consult with like-minded friends about what could be done to save it. While Baruch had been propelled by an uncle towards the garment district, his father and older brother had gone into the scrap business. When his brother realized that there was no future for Baruch in the rag trade, he decided to set him up in an enterprise of his own and put a down payment on a candy store in Baruch's name. Baruch didn't have a head for business, and the candy store held out for only nine months. In the meantime, it proved to be a popular venue for ideologists who gathered there to vent their Zionist fervor. They all belonged to transplanted Pinsk and Vilna branches of Po'alei Zion as did Baruch himself. After a regular work day they would gather at the candy store and spout Zionist philosophy. As his relationship with the candy store was drawing to a close, Baruch was elected a delegate to the founding convention of Po'alei Zion of America that took place on May 1, 1905. It spelled the beginning of his career as a servant of his people. As a key member of the Labor Zionist Movement of America he was both a formulator of policy and a major exponent of that policy. Passionately committed to social welfare, he dreamt of uniting it with Zionism. The Po'alei Zion Movement enabled him to do so. He was executive director of the People's Relief Committee from 1915 to 1924 when it disbanded, and accompanied Herbert Hoover and investment banker Herbert Lehman to Poland to bring food and clothing to survivors of the First World War. During that war, he helped to organize the Jewish Legion and was also instrumental in setting up the American Jewish Congress. He was also editor of Yiddishe Kempfer, and a leading figure in Farband and the Histadrut campaign. In later years, he was elected Po'alei Zion representative to the Executive of the Jewish Agency in America and to the Executive of the World Jewish Congress. He was also president of the Labor Zionist Organization of America. A gifted writer and speaker, as well as an editor and journalist, he was one of the chief spokesman for American Po'alei Zion around the world. Baruch Zuckerman and Kiev-born Nina Avrunin came to America within a year of each other and were introduced by Nina's brother Gershon Avrunin. After their marriage, she busied herself with the women's arm of Po'alei Zion and thus became one of the founders of Pioneer Women, she served for several years as the organization's national secretary before Pioneer Women decided to upgrade its highest office bearers to the rank of president. As national secretary she travelled across America lecturing to women's groups and forming new branches. After the Zuckermans moved to Jerusalem, where Nomi attended the Gymnasia Rehavia, their house became a meeting place for all the who's who of the Zionist Movement. Golda Meir, or Meyerson, as she was called then, had to go back to America with her two children because her daughter Sara had kidney trouble for which suitable treatment was not available in Palestine. Her husband Morris Meyerson, who stayed behind, moved in with the Zuckermans. "Everyone thought Morris Meyerson was our father because our father was never home," recalls Nomi Zuckerman. In 1937, Nomi Zuckerman graduated high school and went to study at a teacher's seminary in Tel Aviv. Golda Meir had already returned so Nomi moved in with Golda's family and helped to run the household, "although Golda baked the Shabbat cake." Nomi Zuckerman is still considered a member of Golda's family and is always invited to state-sponsored memorial services for the former prime minister. In August 1939, on the eve of Hitler's invasion into Poland, both Baruch and Nina Zuckerman were delegates to the 21st Zionist Congress in Geneva. They took Nomi with them by way of a belated high school graduation gift. The Congress plenum decided that given the circumstances, Baruch and Nina Zuckerman were of more value to the Zionist movement operating from America, than from Jerusalem. So they headed back to New York, taking Nomi with them. She spent the major part of the war years studying - first at Columbia University, then at the Tyler School of Fine Arts before returning to Jerusalem with her parents at the end of 1945. During the war years, Baruch Zuckerman became one of the proponents of Yad Vashem. The idea of establishing a Holocaust memorial in Palestine, conceived while the war was still raging, was an immediate response to reports of the mass murder of Jews in countries occupied by the Nazis. It was first proposed in September 1942, at a board meeting of the Jewish National Fund, by Mordecai Shenhavi, a member of Kibbutz Mishmar Ha'emek. In August 1945, the plan was discussed in greater detail at a Zionist meeting in London where it was decided to set up a provisional board, made up of the Zionist leaders with David Remez as chairman, Shlomo Zalman Shragai, Baruch Zuckerman, and Shenhavi. In February 1946, Yad Vashem opened an office in Jerusalem and a branch office in Tel Aviv and in June of that year, convened its first plenary session. In July 1947, the First Conference on Holocaust Research was held at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where further plans were made for Yad Vashem. However the outbreak in May 1948 of the War of Independence, brought almost all Yad Vashem operations for two years. While still in high school, Nomi had been a member of the communications division of the Hagana and Avivah had been her commanding officer. In 1947, the Hagana sent Nomi to Austria, supposedly as a member of the Jewish Agency's education board which was running a variety of educational programs for refugee children. What she was doing in fact, was rounding up adult refugees to bring them illegally to Palestine. Other than Zuckerman, all the members of her group had travelled on Palestine passports issued by the British Mandate, which became pass* after Israel's declaration of statehood. Zuckerman was the only one who could move around freely because she had a US passport. She continued to gravitate between Austria and Germany until 1950 and actually stamped the first Israeli passports - including her own - of the Israeli group in Austria. She also issued travel documents to refugees. She had neither diplomatic nor secretarial training. "I didn't know that when you typed a letter you had to have copies. In Salzburg, I learned to use carbon paper." Thrilled as she was to be helping some of the remnants of world Jewry to reach the Jewish homeland, she was even more excited - perhaps as her father's daughter - to be involved in negotiations to transfer Herzl's remains to Jerusalem. Together with Kurt Levin, the Israeli Consul in Salzburg, she attended the transfer ceremony on August 16, 1949. It was almost 46 years to the day since her father had heard Herzl speak in Vilna. In the interim, Herzl's prophecy had come true: The Jewish people had their own old-new state and the father of the Zionist movement who among others, had inspired all of the Zuckermans, was finally going home.