Chasanowich, Leon

views updated

CHASANOWICH, LEON

CHASANOWICH, LEON (pseudonym of Katriel Shub ; 1882–1925), Labor Zionist leader. Chasanowich, who was born near Vilna, became active in Labor Zionism in 1905. In 1908 he fled from the Russian police to Galicia, where he edited Der Yidisher Arbeyter, publication of the Labor Zionists, and from 1909 worked for them in the United States, Canada, Argentina, and Britain. His book attacking the administration of the colonies of the *Jewish Colonization Association in Argentina, Di Krizis fun der Yidisher Kolonizatsie in Argentine, published in Yiddish and German in 1910, aroused considerable interest. He served as secretary of the world Po'alei Zion movement in Vienna (1913–19) and in 1917 edited its New York organ, Der Yidisher Kemfer. He joined with Ber *Borochov in agitating for an American Jewish congress. After World War i he published studies on the Polish and Ukrainian pogroms and between 1917 and 1920 he represented Labor Zionism at international socialist congresses. After the split in the Po'alei Zion movement in 1920, he worked for *ort, mainly among Jewish farmers of Carpatho-Russia.

bibliography:

D. Ben-Gurion, Ketavim Rishonim (1962), 35–40; Z. Shazar, Or Ishim (19632), 55–62; Kressel, in: Ha-Po'el ha-Ẓa'ir, (March 12, 1968). add. bibliography: L. Chasanowitsch et al., Die Judenfrage der Gegenwart (1919); idem, Les Pogromes anti-Juifs en Pologne et en Galicie XI, XII, 1918 (1919)

[Encyclopaedia Hebraica]