GROSS, ADOLF

GROSS, ADOLF (1862–1937), lawyer, communal worker, and delegate in the Austrian parliament. Gross founded the Jewish Independent Party in Cracow, with the objectives of attaining equality of rights and a communal organization which would concern itself with the needs of the Jewish masses. In his profession Gross won a reputation as a jurist, and in public life as a political journalist and democratic mediator. He established a public company for the construction of cheap lodgings and founded consumer cooperatives. He achieved wide popularity as one of the most prominent members of the Cracow municipal council, on which he was active until 1897. In the electoral campaign for the Austrian parliament of 1907 his opponent was Ḥayyim Hilfstein, a Zionist who exercised particular influence in assimilationist circles. However, Gross defeated him in the struggle for the Jewish vote. As a delegate, he joined the Polish Parliamentary Club in Vienna and collaborated with the Polish Socialist Party (pps). Gross was a member of the public committee for the relief of poor Jews in Galicia founded on the initiative of philanthropic societies in England, Germany, and Austria. In the various institutions he upheld his opposition to Zionism and also opposed an attempt to establish a Jewish secondary school in Cracow.

bibliography:

I. Tenenbaum, Galitsye, mayn Alte Haym (1952), 108, 127; I. Schwarzbart, Tsvishn beyde Velt-Milkhomes (1958), 170, 186; Sefer Kraka (1959), 123.

[Moshe Landau]