Joseph Kissmann

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Joseph Kissmann (July 13, 1889 – December 31, 1967) was a Romanian Jewish lawyer, journalist, and socialist leader. He led the Jewish Labor Bund in Romania from 1930 to 1937 and represented the party in the Romanian Parliament from 1932 to 1933. He worked to defend Jewish communities across Central Europe and wrote histories of Romanian Jewry in Romanian, English, German, and Yiddish.

Born in Păltinoasa, Bukovina, then part of Austria-Hungary, Kissmann came from a family with a sawmill business. His father, Leiser Kissmann, owned several mills, and his mother was Bertha Scharfstein. He was educated at home before going to high school in Siret and studying law at the University of Vienna. He also worked with the Yiddish socialist newspaper Der Sozialdemokrat in Lviv, which connected him with Jewish socialist circles. He married Leah Rosenbaum in 1913.

In 1914 he began legal training in Gura Humorului, but World War I forced him to flee to Bucharest. He worked as a correspondent for the Austrian newspaper Arbeiterzeitung. During the war he was held as an enemy alien in Romania and was released after the Russian Revolution in 1917.

After the war he returned to Vienna and later moved to Cernăuți (now Chernivtsi, Ukraine), where he worked for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. He joined the Bund in Romania and started his own legal practice, helping workers, tenants, and political detainees.

From 1930 to 1937 he was president of the Jewish Labor Bund in Romania. He was anti-communist and a leading Jewish socialist figure in Romania and Central Europe. Because the Bund was not very popular, it allied with the Romanian Social Democratic Party. He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1932, representing Northern Bessarabia.

During the rise of fascist parties in Romania, he was arrested, then released. He and his family left Romania in 1938 and settled in New York City. He survived World War II and continued to take part in Jewish and socialist discussions and writings. Kissmann died in New York on December 31, 1967, at age 78. His funeral was held in New York on January 3, 1968.