Baruch Zuckerman  Baruch Zuckerman (; June 26, 1887 – December 13, 1970) was a leading American-Israeli Zionist, one of the leading proponents of Yad Vashem, editor of "Yiddishe Kempfer", and a leading figure in the Farband and Histadrut campaigns, and president of the Labor Zionist Organization of America. Baruch was born into a poor family in the Hassidic village of Kurenitz, near Vilnius (then in Russia), the son of a peddler. His parents were Vigdor Chait and Sara, nee Levin. Most of the family later immigrated to the United States and changed their surname to Zuckerman. Yitzhak Zuckerman, one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, wrote in his memoirs that Baruch Zuckerman was his relative. When Zuckerman was 15, he began to feel the first stirrings of Zionism. He became seriously interested in this fledgling ideology in August 1903 when he heard Theodor Herzl speak in Vilnius. In 1904, aged 16, Zuckerman arrived in the USA, where he initially worked in a sweatshop in New York's garment district for $2 per week. It was there that he learned to put together sleeves and cuffs for men's shirts. Later, he graduated to piece work. But his heart was not in the job. While Zuckerman had been propelled by an uncle towards the garment district, his father and older brother had gone into the scrap business. When his brother realized that there was no future for Zuckerman in the rag trade, he decided to set him up in an enterprise of his own and put a down payment on a candy store in his name. Zuckerman was not a success, and the candy store closed down after only nine months. In the meantime, it had become a popular venue for ideologists who gathered there to vent their Zionist fervour. They all belonged to transplanted Pinsk and Vilnius branches of Poale Zion as did Zuckerman himself. As his relationship with the candy store was drawing to a close, Zuckerman was elected a delegate to the founding convention of Poale Zion of America that took place on May 1, 1905. This was the beginning of his career as a servant of his people. As a key member of the Labor Zionist Movement of America, he was both a formulator of policy and one of its major exponents. Passionately committed to social welfare, Zuckerman dreamt of uniting it with Zionism.