Weizmann: his life and times

Written in 1975, this is a magnificent centenary portrait of one of the re-established State of Israel's great founding fathers and his life and times. It is part album, part biography and part a history of Zionism and the Jews of the Holy Land. Weizmann was born in 1874 in Motol, Russia, the same year as Winston Churchill. He taught chemistry at Manchester University in England from 1904 to 1914. During the First World War Weizmann discovered an improved method of making acetone and Butyl alcohol for explosives which aided Britain's war effort. This helped to recruit Britain's support in the 1917 Balfour Declaration for a re-establishment of a Jewish Homeland in Palestine. From 1920 to 1931 and from 1935 to 1948 Weizmann headed the World Zionist Organization which worked to re-establish an ancient homeland for the Jews in their ancient cradle in the Land of Israel. He headed the Jewish delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and worked there to have the League of Nations assign administration of Palestine to Great Britain.. Lord Boothby , an eminent English parliamentarian said of Weizmann "Of all the great men I have known, Chaim Weizmann had a kind of greatness I had never encountered in any of the others. He was a prophet, a mystic, a scientist, a philosopher and a practical statesman all mixed up into one compound of inspired clay". Weizmann was in many ways the antithesis of Edwin Montague, the sinister Jewish British Cabinet Minister who in the words of Balfour's niece Blanche Dugdale (herself a great gentile Zionist and humanitarian) "Edwin Montague could not extend to his own people the sympathy he evinced later for the national and religious rights of Indians and Moslems". When Weizmann visited Palestine in 1918 he was so impressed by the healthy and strong Jews there "so full of the joys of life" he wrote "that I've ever seen such Jews before". And the children! the children are beautiful, natural and cheerful, they love the land" This is a perfect description of the Jews of Israel today! Weizmann spoke out on behalf of the Jews of Palestine when they were attacked and murdered by Arab gangs in pogroms there in 1920, 1921, 1929 and 1936-1939. He spoke out against the Britain's 1938 White Paper, preventing Jews from escaping Nazi ravaged Europe to Palestine, and begged the Allies to take action to stop the Nazi Holocaust and open the gates of Palestine to Jews fleeing Hitler. Weizmann was instrumental during the Second World War in persuading Britain to approve a Jewish Legion, in the British Army, which fought under the Star of David flag. It was fitting that Weizmann, who saw Zionism rightly as the last hope of the Jews after the Holocaust, to become the first President of the State of Israel in 1948.