Chaim Weizmann on the Assassination of Russian Pogrom Organizer Plehve: A Pity He Didn't Die Years Ago

Background

The mourning stationery on which this letter is written was, most likely, for Theodor Herzl, whose death on July 3, 1904 Weizmann - whom many considered Herzl's successor - took personally. But another death is overtly mentioned here: that of the notorious pogrom-organizing tormentor of the Jews, Russian Interior Minister Vyacheslav Plehve, killed by a bomb on July 28th. "About Plehve," he writes in fractured but direct English, "is only one thing to say. It is a pity that he did not gone some years ago; now he was skillfully sent to Father Abraham." The rest of his news isn't, he says, "many": he will soon go to Vienna, he labors like a coolie, his fiancee Vera [a founder of Women's International Zionist Organization; they married in 1907] is coming, and he sends best wishes to his friends with whom he first stayed in London at 22 Grosvenor Road. "Excuse me the dumm letter," he adds, "I am not so dumm but it is my English."

Autograph Letter Signed, in English and German, 2 pages, octavo, on black bordered mourning stationery, Manchester [England], August 4, 1904. To Miss Mitzi Van Gelder in London.

With autograph envelope.