STEINHARDT, LAURENCE ADOLF

STEINHARDT, LAURENCE ADOLF (1892–1950), U.S. attorney and diplomat. Steinhardt was born in New York City. After his admission to the bar in 1916 he entered the U.S. Army in 1917, moving up from private to a commission and service on the provost marshal general's staff. He was active for a time in the Federation of American Zionists and the American Zion Commonwealth. From 1920 to 1933 he practiced law in his uncle Samuel *Untermyer's firm, Guggenheimer, Untermyer, and Marshall, and wrote articles on medical jurisprudence, labor unions, and economics. One piece attacking President Herbert Hoover's budgetary and financial policies brought him to Franklin D. Roosevelt's attention, and Steinhardt worked for Roosevelt's election in 1932. Roosevelt appointed him minister to Sweden in 1933, the beginning of Steinhardt's 17 years in six diplomatic posts, all but the last of them requiring great resources of judgment in a series of delicate situations. He served in Sweden (1933–37), when the economic effects of the Depression and the political and military problems posed by the rise of Hitler were predominant; as ambassador in Peru (1937–39), when Roosevelt was seeking to solidify a policy of collective security for Latin America; and in the USSR (1939–41), from the time of the nonaggression pact to the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Steinhardt served in Turkey (1942–45), when that country's neutrality was pivotal to the Allied war effort. During his service in Russia Steinhardt lent his influence to the stringent U.S. immigration laws, which from 1940 operated virtually to exclude Jewish refugees. However, as U.S. ambassador in Turkey he vigorously cooperated with the U.S. War Refugee Board, the Jewish Agency, and Ira Hirschmann by persuading that government to permit the entry and passage of European Jews in ever-increasing numbers. The lives of tens of thousands were thus saved through his efforts. He also served in Czechoslovakia (1945–48), when communist pressure built up to the 1948 coup. Steinhardt's last ambassadorial post was in Canada, where he served from 1948 until his death in an airplane crash.

bibliography:

New York Times (March 29–31, April 1, 1950); H.L. Feingold, The Politics of Rescue (1970), 285–9.