Berliand, Shlomo Meir
BERLIAND, SHLOMO MEIR
BERLIAND, SHLOMO MEIR (1868–1941), one of the first members of the Ḥovevei Zion in Bessarabia and a founder of the *Odessa Committee, the center of the Ḥovevei Zion in Russia (1890). Berliand was born in the Ukraine. In 1920 he became the secretary of the committee for aiding Jewish refugees from the Ukraine and in 1921 was a member of the delegation sent to Bucharest to the Romanian prime minister Averescu to ask for help. From 1926 until 1940 he served as chairman of the Zionist Federation and the central committees of *Keren Hayesod, of *Tarbut in Bessarabia, Romania, and of the Committee for Education and Culture of the Jewish community of Kishinev. He was also a member of the Municipal Council of Kishinev. Berliand was an advocate of *Aḥad Ha-Am's "cultural Zionism." Head of the Wissotzky Tea Company's agency throughout this period, he worked for the Zionist movement wherever he traveled, and aided Jacob Bernstein-Kogan in his Zionist activities. At the outbreak of World War ii Berliand refused to join his sons in London. When Bessarabia was occupied by the ussr (June 1940), he was forced to leave Kishinev. In June 1941, a week before the German attack on the ussr, he was arrested in Czernowitz, where he was living in his daughter's home. Although he declared that he had ceased all political activity, he was sent to a forced labor camp in Kom along with a group of Zionists, and died there. His wife, daughter, and son-in-law were also arrested and deported.
bibliography:
Haolam (Feb. 24, 1938); M. Landau et al. (eds.), Al Admat Bessarabia, 2 (1962), 13–14. add. bibliography: M. Slipoi, in: Yahadut Bessarabia (eg, 11), 873; D. Vinitzky, Bessarabia ha-Yehudit be-Ma'arekhoteihah bein Shetei Milḥamot ha-Olam 1914–1940 (1973), 125–27, 130–32, 157.
[David Vinitzky /
Lucian-Zeev Herscovici (2nd ed.)]