Abraham Leib Zissu (first name also Avram, middle name also Leiba or
Leibu; January 25, 1888 â€" September 6, 1956) was a Romanian writer,
political essayist, industrialist, and spokesman of the Jewish
Romanian community. Of lowly social origin and a recipient of Hasidic
education, he became a noted cultural activist, polemicist, and
newspaper founder, remembered primarily for his Mântuirea daily. By
the end of World War I, he emerged as a theorist of Religious Zionism,
preferring communitarianism and self-segregation to the
assimilationist option, while also promoting literary modernism in his
activity as novelist, dramatist, and cultural sponsor. He was the
inspiration behind the Jewish Party, which competed with the
mainstream Union of Romanian Jews for the Jewish vote. Zissu and Union
leader Wilhelm Filderman had a lifelong disputation over religious and
practical politics.Always a confrontational critic of antisemitism,
Zissu found himself marginalized by fascist regimes in the late 1930s
and for most of World War II. During the Holocaust era, he risked his
personal freedom to defend the interests of his community, and was
especially vocal as a critic of the collaborationist Central Jewish
Office. He eventually reached a compromise with the Ion Antonescu
regime when the latter curbed its deportations of Jews to
Transnistria, and, after 1943, helped initiate the Aliyah Bet exodus
of Romanian and Hungarian Jews to Mandatory Palestine. His
contribution is at the center of an enduring controversy, focusing on
his alleged favoritism of Zionist Jews and his cantankerousness.In his
final years, Zissu's Zionism merged with explicit anti-communism,
clashing directly with the Romanian Communist Party's
anti-cosmopolitan agenda. His renewed effort to ensure the mass
emigration of Romanian Jews, and his contacts with Israel, made him a
target for the communist regime: in 1951, he was arrested, and, in
1954, sentenced to life imprisonment for the crime of high treason. He
was amnestied after some two years in prison, where he had been
tortured and brutalized. Himself an emigrant, he died shortly after
resettling in Israel.Born into a Hasidic Jewish family in Piatra
NeamÈ›,[3][4][5] his parents were Pincu Zissu, a bank accountant, and
his wife Hinda-Lea; he had nine siblings.[6] Several sources describe
Abraham as the brother-in-law of poet-journalist Tudor Arghezi and
uncle of photographer Eleazar "Eli" Teodorescu, through his sister
Constanța Zissu.[7] However, more detailed accounts note that
Constanța was born in Pitești to an unrelated Zissu family.[8]
Leibu; January 25, 1888 â€" September 6, 1956) was a Romanian writer,
political essayist, industrialist, and spokesman of the Jewish
Romanian community. Of lowly social origin and a recipient of Hasidic
education, he became a noted cultural activist, polemicist, and
newspaper founder, remembered primarily for his Mântuirea daily. By
the end of World War I, he emerged as a theorist of Religious Zionism,
preferring communitarianism and self-segregation to the
assimilationist option, while also promoting literary modernism in his
activity as novelist, dramatist, and cultural sponsor. He was the
inspiration behind the Jewish Party, which competed with the
mainstream Union of Romanian Jews for the Jewish vote. Zissu and Union
leader Wilhelm Filderman had a lifelong disputation over religious and
practical politics.Always a confrontational critic of antisemitism,
Zissu found himself marginalized by fascist regimes in the late 1930s
and for most of World War II. During the Holocaust era, he risked his
personal freedom to defend the interests of his community, and was
especially vocal as a critic of the collaborationist Central Jewish
Office. He eventually reached a compromise with the Ion Antonescu
regime when the latter curbed its deportations of Jews to
Transnistria, and, after 1943, helped initiate the Aliyah Bet exodus
of Romanian and Hungarian Jews to Mandatory Palestine. His
contribution is at the center of an enduring controversy, focusing on
his alleged favoritism of Zionist Jews and his cantankerousness.In his
final years, Zissu's Zionism merged with explicit anti-communism,
clashing directly with the Romanian Communist Party's
anti-cosmopolitan agenda. His renewed effort to ensure the mass
emigration of Romanian Jews, and his contacts with Israel, made him a
target for the communist regime: in 1951, he was arrested, and, in
1954, sentenced to life imprisonment for the crime of high treason. He
was amnestied after some two years in prison, where he had been
tortured and brutalized. Himself an emigrant, he died shortly after
resettling in Israel.Born into a Hasidic Jewish family in Piatra
NeamÈ›,[3][4][5] his parents were Pincu Zissu, a bank accountant, and
his wife Hinda-Lea; he had nine siblings.[6] Several sources describe
Abraham as the brother-in-law of poet-journalist Tudor Arghezi and
uncle of photographer Eleazar "Eli" Teodorescu, through his sister
Constanța Zissu.[7] However, more detailed accounts note that
Constanța was born in Pitești to an unrelated Zissu family.[8]
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