Volfson, Leo
July 4, 1882–June 3, 1959
He was born in Huli, Romania. He graduated from a Romanian high school.
In 1900 he moved to the United States, studied law at New York University, and from 1906 he was a lawyer and community leader in New York.
He was a close friend of V. Zhabotinsky. He was one of the founders and for a time also president of the Association of Romanian Jews in America, executive member of the American Zionist Organization, vice-president of the American Jewish Congress, and the like.
While still in Romania, he wrote for the Romanian and the Romanian Jewish press. In America he began writing in Yiddish and published a series of articles on the Jewish condition in Romania for Morgn-Zhurnal (Morning Journal) in New York. He was a regular contributor for the International Press Bureau and its correspondent to the Peace Conference in Versailles. From there he corresponded for Yiddish and English newspapers. For many years he served as the New York correspondent to the French newspaper La Lanterne in Paris.
He published current events articles on both Jewish and general issues for: Tog (Day) and Tsayt-Gayst (Spirit of The Times) in New York and Idishe Velt (Jewish World) in Philadelphia, as well as a series of travel narratives on Jewish life in Poland, Romania, France, Algiers, Egypt, and Israel in the Jewish and Anglo-Jewish press in America and abroad.
He authored two pamphlets in English: The Jews in Roumania (New York: Diamant & Schwartz, 1911), 27 pp.; on the exclusion law enacted against Jews in Romania.
In 1957 his seventy-fifth birthday was celebrated by the Zionist Revisionists in America.
Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 1; Mortkhe Dantsis, in Tog (New York) (January 29, 1932); Dr. Shloyme Bikl, in Tog- Morgn Zhurnal (New York) (July 26, 1957); obituary notice in Forverts (New York) (June 4, 1959); Universal Jewish Encyclopedia (New York), vol. 10, p. 562.