SCHWARZBART, ISAAC IGNACY

SCHWARZBART, ISAAC IGNACY (1888–1961), Zionist leader in Poland. Born in Chryzanow, Galicia, Schwarzbart completed his legal studies at the University of Cracow (1913). He was active in the academic Zionist society, Ha-Shaḥar, while still a student and was the chief editor of the Polish-language Zionist daily Nowy Dziennik (1921–24). He was the chairman of the Zionist Federation in west Galicia and Silesia and wrote its history in the Cracow Book. Schwarzbart was among the main founders of the World Movement of *General Zionists, of which he was chairman from its establishment in Cracow in 1931 until the split in 1935, after which he became the chairman of the General Zionists B. He became a member of the Zionist General Council in 1933. In 1938 he led the establishment of a committee to coordinate the activities of all the Zionist groups in western Galicia and Silesia. He was elected to the Polish Sejm in 1938. At the outbreak of World War ii he fled to Romania and aided Polish refugees and Polish and Romanian Jews who were making their way to Palestine. He then became a member of the Polish government-in-exile in Paris and London (1940–45). From 1946 Schwarzbart lived in the U.S., where he directed the administrative department of the *World Jewish Congress. He published articles in Polish and Yiddish and also brought out a book on Jewish life in Cracow from 1919 to 1939 entitled Tsvishn Beyde Velt Milkhomes ("Between the Two World Wars," 1958), as well as booklets on the Warsaw Ghetto (1953).

[Getzel Kressel]