64 Friday, December 9, 1977 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS Memories of Early Zionism Kept Alive by Nahum Sokolow's Daughter By MAURICE SAMUELSON (Copyright 1977, JTA, Inc.) LONDON — From the outside it looks like any other large, old family house in London. But the door opens to reveal the enchanted home of a Polish Jewish princess. I had come to interview Dr. Celina Sokolow, last surviving child of Nahum Sokolow, the great Hebrew writer and journalist, - collaborator of Chaim Weizmann and one-time president of the World Zionist Organization. "Celina cannot walk now so she will receive you upstairs," said a smiling elderly gentleman. "But first I will show you around." My guide is Dr. Emil Goldstein, a neighbor who had first met Sokolow in Bulgaria half a century ago and takes a protective interest in his daughter. He conducted me into a huge, dark reception room with vaulted ceiling, its walls lined with pictures and books. It vibrated with the NAHUM SOKOLOW spirit of the man who lived here from 1921 to his death in 1936. "That portrait of Nahum Sokolow was painted by Leonid Pasternak, father of Boris Pasternak, in Berlin in about 1932," Goldstein explained. "At this grand piano, Artur Rubinstein, another close friend of the Sokolows, used to play." I was soon to hear a host of other legendary names whose spirits still inhabit Number 43 Compayne Gar- dens,-Swiss Cottage. At the top of the broad sweeping staircase another door opens, and there, enth- roned in a blaze of sunlight, is a smiling, white-haired Celina. "So you want to know about the Balfour Declaration," she says, her blue eyes sparkling with delight. Open on the large table before her is a volume of her father's monumental —"History of Zionism: 1600- 1919." She has written a brief note of what she wants to say. Although in her late 80s, her voice is as clear and firm as her memory: "What you have to under- stand, my dear, is that the Balfour Declaration was the end of a chapter in Zionist history. I remember as though it is today the great celebration in the London Opera House on Dec. 2, 1917, one month after the declaration was signed. There was such enthusiasm and it was all so solemn. People had come from all over England, and from France, too. I was so proud for my father. As a humble daughter, I can say that he worked with all his heart for the revival of the Jewish people, and his work was crowned on that day." She herself had been a medical student in Switzer- land when, during World War I she had been asked by her father to join him- in London where, with Dr. Yehiel . Tschlenov, another leader of the World Zionist Organization; he was seek- ing British support, together with British Zionists led by Weizmann. Although she was to work intermittently as a doctor.as well, she was to remain her father's assistant, medical adviser and companion throughout his world-wide travels until his death. Dur- ing World War I, Sokolow lived in the Regent's Palace Hotel, near the Zionist office at Empire House, 175 Piccadilly. The German zeppelins dropped bombs nightly and the Sokolows often rushed from the office to the hotel for shelter. Sometimes Celina joined her father on his frequent crossings to Paris for meetings of the Inter-Allied Conference. The ferries from Southampton were completely blacked out because of the danger of enemy submarines. On one occasion, the whole British War Cabinet was on board the same ship. Just as she recalls her father with gratitude and pleasure, so Celina speaks of many other great figures — Balfour, Lloyd George, Thomas Masaryk, among them. On Weizmann, she recalls how he was often threatening to resign in exasperation and how her father would always talk him out of it-. "Chaim Yevsherevitch! How can you resign? A captain of a ship that sinks can never resign!" he would exclaim. And Weizmann always demurred. Her father was always loyal to. Weizmann, and they understood each other, Celina adds. While Sokolow excelled in addressing large gatherings and - winning sympathizers for the cause, Weizmann was more effective as a fund-raiser and in smaller gatherings. For Sir Mark Sykes, MP, an assistant secretary to the War Cabinet, she retains a special affection. "He was a great and sincere friend and did more than any other British official to secure the Balfour Declaration. When- ever the telephone rang very early in the morning, my father would say: 'That must be Sir Mark telling me he had just had another of his brain storms.' " Sykes died shortly after World War I, but Celina is still in touch with his son, Christo- pher Sykes, the author of "Crossroads to Israel," the biography of Wingate, and other books of Jewish interest. Sir Mark and Sokolow were at the meeting, together with Harold Nicol- son, to discuss how General Allenby should formally enter Jerusalem after the Turks had fled. "Some wanted to have all kinds of fanfares. But my father sug- gested that Allenby should enter the city quietly, as a private Englishman, holding a Bible in his hand, and that is what happened." Celina's memories also embrace the decades before and after the Balfour Decla- ration. When she was a child her father was already the famous editor and col- umnist in the Hebrew Polish newspaper, "Ha Zefira," whose press was adjacent to the house in which she was born. She recalls how the workers, many in the tradi- tional Jewish garments of the "heim," set the type by hand, one letter at a time. In particular, she remem- bers Reb Elle, the only one permitted to set her father's articles. She herself some- times acted as "copy boy." Then came the exciting day when loud type-setting machines and rotary presses were introduced, causing consternation to the other inhabitants of the quiet Jewish street. The paper's circulation rose to its peak, she recalls, during the Dreyfus trial in the 1890s. After Theodor Herzl's death, Sokolow was asked to become the secretary gen- eral of the World Zionist Organization. He was also the first person to address a Zionist conference in mod- em Hebrew. In 1905, a group of Russian Zionists, headed by Meir Dizengoff, said they were going to build a new settlement out- side Jaffa and asked Soko- low to propose a name for it. He told them to built it first and then give it a name. But they insisted, so Sokolow suggested "Tel Aviv," the title of his Hebrew translation of Herzl's novel, "Altneuland." After World War I, Celina accompanied her father on his world-wide travels on behalf of the World Zionist Organization, including a tour of North America and two visits to South Africa. It was during these tours, she says, that she became a Zionist in her own right. "The reaction of the Jewish communities we visited con- vinced me of the strength of the Zionist idea," she said. But it was a two-way traf- fic. Just as Sokolow toured the Jewish world, so many of the leading Zionists of the 1920s and 1930s gravitated around him in his London home. Zalman Shazar, later to be Israel's third presi- dent, lived on the top floor giving Hebrew lessons while a student at the London School of Economics. "Are you really still living in the same house?" Shazar asked her incredulously when she visited him shortly before his death.. Other frequent visitors were Vladimir Jabotinsky, Moshe Sharett and David Ben-Gurion and "the whole of the Labor Zionist lead- ership. For 'Jabotinsky, Sokolow had had a special respect and was very sorry when his Revisionist Party seceded from the World Zionist Organization. 'It was important for us to have an opposition,' he used to say." And suddenly we were talking about the Israel of 1977. What did Celina think about Israel being governed by Jabotinsky's political heirs? Her face brightened with enthusiasm: :`Oh, I know Menahem Begin very well and he embraced me warmly when I visited Israel. I admire him for his honesty, his straight- forwardness and devotion to the cause. I was very pleased when he became prime minister because I respect a person who is true to himself, even though not everybody agreed with his methods in the independ- ence struggle. I pray for his health and that his efforts will be crowned with success." Our conversation con- cluded as it began — on the subject of her father. She _uch of was grieved that so m his writings were inadequately known by the present generation and that many of his literary proj- ects had remained uncom- pleted. Among them were his Hebrew Dictionary, con- ceived on the scale of the Grande Larousse. She reached for a copy of his Hebrew biography of the philosopher Baruch Spinoza. Years ago, Ben-Gurion had written to her saying it should be translated and published in English. But this had still not been done, although 1977 had been widely marked as the 300th anniversary of Spinoza's death. Above all, she hoped that, after years of pro- crastination, the Israel gov- ernment would at last cre- ate a Sokolow Institute to house her father's library and archives, including many unpublished manu- scripts, which had left this house many years ago to be stored in Jerusalem. "Have I beeri talking too much?" she suddenly asked as her niece brought in coffee and ginger cake. "My trouble is that I have so many memo- ries. I am embarrassed because I remember too much." I excused her with gratitude and was led- out, past another portrait of her father, back into a world which remembers too little. However, Celina Soko- low's hopes for an institute to house her father's memo- rabilia may go unfulfilled, for as Josef Fraenkel, the Zionist historian, said, the role of the late Dr. Nahum Sokolow in securing British support for Jewry in the first World War had been "pushed into the shadows." This, he said, was largely the fault of successive Israeli governments. Although the Tel Aviv press center and a kibutz bear Nahum Sokolow's name, no suitable home has yet been provided for Soko- low's writings and docu- ments which are so vast that the poet Bialik once said it would require 300 camels to collect them together. By contrast, thanks largely to the late Meyer Weisgal, the memory of Weizmann has been kept green by the Weizmann Foundation and the Weiz- mann Institute of Science. "An appropriate me_morial to Sokolow is now shame- fully overdue," Fraenkel said. Some 20 years ago Fraen- kel was instrumental in acquring Sokolow's papers from Celina. They were transferred to Israel on the understanding that eventu- ally they would be housed in a building to be erected on a plot in Jerusalem originally owned by Sokolow. However, when Fraenkel reminded the Israeli author- ities of this promise he was told that money was not yet available. While Fraenkel accepted this in years of extreme austerity, he found it hard to understand during the boom years which immediately followed the Six-Day War. Meanwhile, the Sokolow papers—together with the other central Zionist archives—have remained in cramped and unsuitable conditions in the Jewish Agency building on Jerusa- lem's King George Street_ Fraenkel believes besides being unfair to Sokolow's memory, Israel has also acted against her own interests by not housing the Zidnist archives prop- erly. By thus stinting research facilities for mod- em Jewish historians, Israel is failing fully to develop an important element in • her present political battle. At the same time, the Arabs are pouring money into such bodies as the Beirut Institute for Palestine Stud- ies, which is producing an ever growing list of presti- gious publications. He is hopeful, however, that the new government in Israel may be more respon- sive than its predecessors. Menahem Begin, Fraenkel CELINA SOKOLOW agreed, "has a greater sense of history than any other Israeli prime minister since Ben-Gurion." Sokolow was the editor of the famous Hebrew daily Ha Zefira and author of more than 30 books on sci- ence, Jewish history and philosophy. Fifteen years older than Weizmann, he was also his political senior during the negotiations for the Balfour Declaration, being the resentative of the Zionist Actions Committee, whereas Weizmann repre- sented only the British Zion- ist Federation. In the summer of 1917, it was Sokolow who secured historic statements of sup- port for the Zionist cause by France, Italy and the Vati- can, which the British' had demanded as a precondition for their own statement in November of that year. In 1920, Sokolow headed the Zionist delegation to the Pari Peace Conference. In 1956, Sokolow's remains were transferred to Jerusa- lem, and buried near the body of Herzl and other founding fathers of the Jew- ish state.