Dr. Shimshon Rosenbaum
Dr. Shimshon (Simon) Rosenbaum (born 3rd August 1859, in Pinsk – died 6th December 1934, in Tel Aviv).
Dr. Rosenbaum was a Jewish-Lithuanian attorney and statesman, one of the leading Zionists in Minsk and one of the main organizers of the Minsk Conference. He was a member of the First State Duma (Assembly) of the Russian Empire (1906 – 1907), a member of the founding Siimas (the Lithuanian Parliament) (1920 – 1922) and of the second Siimas (1923 – 1925), as well as serving as the Minister of Jewish Affairs in the Lithuanian government. He was also a member of the Zionist General Council and served as the Lithuanian Consul in Eretz Israel.
Rosenbaum was born in Pinsk located in the Minsk region of White Russia in 1859. His father Ya’akov was a blacksmith. He studied in a Cheder at the Volozhin Yeshiva and later studied law at the universities of Odessa and Vienna, graduating as a doctor of law in 1887. He practised as a lawyer in both his home town Pinsk, and in Minsk. In 1885, during his studies, he joined the Hovevei Zion Movement. He participated in Zionist congresses from their inception and until 1914; he was a member of the Zionist General Council and joined the Zionei Zion Movement which was strongly opposed to the Uganda Scheme. He was among the organizers of the Minsk Convention and the Helsinfors Society, and was elected to be a member of the Central Committee of the Russian Zionist Movement.
From 1887, he lived in his home town of Pinsk, moving to Minsk in 1890, where he lived until 1915. He served as a delegate of the first Duma in Russia from 14th April 1906, joined the Constitutional Democratic Party but was imprisoned for three months and banned from taking part in the Duma again. As an attorney, he dealt with files connected to the pogroms and anti-Zionist cases. During WW1 he moved to Vilna where he led the Lithuanian Zionist Movement. In 1918, he served as a representative of the Lithuanian government in talks with the Ottoman authorities regarding the fate of Eretz Israel. In 1919, he participated in the drafting of the Lithuanian Constitution with the guarantee of extensive Jewish autonomy. He became the head of the Lithuanian Jewish Council and with the establishment of an independent Lithuania, he was nominated Deputy Foreign Minister, and participated in the delegation for talks leading to the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. In 1920, he signed the Soviet-Lithuanian Peace Treaty on behalf of Lithuania with Soviet Russia, which determined that Vilna belonged to Lithuania. In June 1923 (at the end of his term as a member of the second Siimas in February of that year), Dr. Rosenbaum was appointed as Minister of Jewish Affairs in the ninth Lithuanian government headed by Ernst Galvnauskas.
In 1924, following the cancellation of Jewish autonomy in Lithuania, Dr. Rosenbaum resigned from the government and emigrated to Israel. He was one of the founders of the School of Law and Economics in Tel Aviv. In 1927, he was appointed Honorary Consul of Lithuania in Eretz Israel and in 1929, he became the Consul General. That same year, when he was 70, the president of Lithuania awarded him the Order of the Grand Duke Gediminas (in Lithuanian: Lietuvos didžiojo kunigaikščio Gedimino ordino medalis). Rosenbaum was nominated as honorary president of the organization for immigrants from Minsk to Eretz Israel, which was founded in 1930.
Rosenbaum died in Tel Aviv in 1934. He is buried in the Trumpeldor Street.
Source: Wikipedia
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