Shaul Lurie

https://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/pinsk1/pine11_088.html

from The “Rothschilds” of Pinsk and Karlin. A Historical Evaluation (cont'd) by Dr. Wolf Zeev Rabinowitsch

Idel Lourié's son, Shaul (born 1879), was Chaim Weizmann's private pupil from about 1888 to 1892. From the above-mentioned letters of Weizmann to Ovsei Lourié it can be seen how much care Weizmann took with the education of Shaul, who was five years his younger. In 1897, at the age of 18 Shaul Lourié went to Germany. After registering there as a student at the Darmstadt technical institute, he traveled to Basel to attend the First Zionist Congress. For this reason, I reproduce here some of his reminiscences of that time, as written by him in a letter to me in reply to my questions: "I went to Basel, because the Congress aroused my interest. I remember the great impression made on me by the large banners with Zionist slogans on them flying over the Congress building, when in Russia everyone was afraid of mentioning the name 'Jew' in public. I telephoned the secretary of the Congress, Herr Reich from Austria, to enquire whether I could take part in the Congress. He replied: 'Yes. There are some communities in South Africa which were unable to send delegates and have therefore asked me to find people to volunteer to serve as their representatives and report to them on the proceedings'. I think that I represented Bulawayo in Southern Rhodesia; at any rate, in the report published by Herr Reich after the Congress my name appears as the representative of that country. Another similarly appointed 'representative' of a Jewish community in South Africa was Leon Simon, who later became a well-known Zionist and translated Ahad Haam's works. At the Uganda Conference I was not actually a delegate, but was in close contact with Weizmann. I also knew Herzl. At the time of the split over the Uganda Programme, I sided with the opposition. Later, I helped to bring about a reconciliation between the supporters of the Programme and the Democratic Faction. In one of the published photographs from the Congress, I appear together with Herzl and Weizmann"[49]. In 1901 Shaul Lourié worked in Chaim Weizmann's laboratory in Geneva. On his return to Darmstadt he became one of the founders of the "Maccabiah" Zionist Students Organization. We find his name, together with those of Motzkin, Weizmann, Buber, Leib Yafe, his relative and fellow-townsman Georg Halpern, and others, in a list of leading Zionists who undertook (in 1903) to travel to university towns in Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, and other countries, in order to propagate the ideas of the Democratic Faction. During the years 1905 - 1939 Shaul Lourié was a businessman in London. He then went to the United States (Santa Monica. California) and died there at the age of 91 on August 1970, one of the last surviving participants in the First Zionist Congress.