BRAMSON, LEON

BRAMSON, LEON (Leonty ; 1869–1941), communal worker and writer. Born in Kovno, Bramson graduated in law from Moscow University, then settled in St. Petersburg, where he practiced, and was active in the *Society for the Promotion of Culture Among the Jews. He was also director of the central committee of the *Jewish Colonization Association from 1899 to 1906. Under his direction a statistical study was carried out on the economic situation of the Jews in Russia (published in Russian in 1904 and in French in 1906–8). He was one of the compilers of the Sistematicheskiy ukazatel literatury o yevreyakh na russkom yazyke ("Systematic Guide to Russian Literature About Jews," 1892), and contributed many articles to Voskhod and other periodicals on problems of Jewish education, emigration, and colonization. Active in Jewish political life, Bramson was one of the founders of the "Jewish Democratic Group." In 1906 he was elected to the First Duma as a deputy for Kovno province, joining the Labor faction ("Trudoviki"). During World War i, the Revolution, and the Civil War, Bramson was an organizer of the Central Committee for the Relief of Jewish War Sufferers (*yekopo). When he left Russia in 1920, he continued to work in Western Europe on behalf of *ort (with which he had been associated in Russia from 1909), serving as its president from 1923 until his death. Bramson had been a convinced anti-Zionist, but changed his views after a visit to Ereẓ Israel in 1934.

bibliography:

Yevreyskiy mir, 2 (1944), 7–54; S. Oron, in: He-Avar, 12 (1965), 191–8.