Ozjasz Wasser was born in Lviv, Poland on September 12, 1866. At that time, Lviv was the capital of Galicia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Wasser was a Polish lawyer and prominent member and leader of the Jewish community in Lviv between World Wars I and II. A full chapter is devoted to him in one of the few surviving publications on Polish Jewry.^[1][2] “Ozjasz” was the Polish version of his first name, “Osias” was the German equivalent.

Wasser was President of the Board of the Tempel progressive synagogue, the first reformed synagogue in Galicia (Eastern Europe). He was leader of the assimilationist movement in Poland in the period between the World Wars, beginning in 1919 with the Union of Poles of the Mosaic Faith in all Polish Lands, a Polish national assimilationist movement.^[3] He also served as head of the Progressive Association in Lwow.^[4]

Wasser married Frederikya Kronik in July 1892. Frederikya was the daughter of Jacob Kronik, a Jewish businessman and whose family operated a liquor business in Lviv.^[5] Together they lived in a townhouse on No.6 on Kostiushka street in Lviv.^[6]

Wasser was a supporter of the settlement movement in Palestine through his involvement with the Keren Hayesod Society established in Lviv in 1921 as a branch of the National Zionist Organization.^[7]

Wasser was a victim of the Holocaust and has an entry in Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center.^[8]

Early life and education

Wasser Family mid-1930's.jpg

Wasser's father was Chaim Rubin Wasser, a wealthy merchant, and his mother was Szajindel Frimet Salat, born into a prominent rabbinical family.^[9]

At an early age, Wasser was sent to study Talmudic teachings with his relative Uri Wolf Salat, the Lviv deputy rabbi, and Ozjasz Thon, a Jewish scholar and early supporter of Zionism.

Wasser learned about Polish history through his friendship with Agaton Giller. He attended a German secondary school in Lviv, graduating in 1887. During this time, Wasser entered the circle of young people focused on Dr. Kobak. He joined Mikra Kodesh, where he became acquainted with Ozjasz Thon, Mordecai Ehrenpreis and others.^[10]

Wasser then enrolled at the University of Lviv, concentrating in law.  While studying law, he also participated in Bratnia Pomoc, a Polish students' mutual aid organization, and Brothers Alliance, an assimilationist student organization.^[11]

Career and achievements

After graduating from law school in early 1892, Doctor Wasser started his own practice of law, becoming a well-known lawyer in Lviv. He specialized in corporate and business law and was one of the founding members of Orbis, the oldest travel agency in Poland.^[12]

After years of Polish and Polish-Jewish political and social work, Wasser became active on the management council of the Tempel Synagogue (Lviv) in the years before the First World War. He became a board member in 1914 and then Deputy Chairman to Emil Parnas in 1916.

in 1916 Wasser was elected vice-chairman of the state commission which during World War1, (after the retreat of the Tzarist troups), temporarily functioned as a body governing the Jewish community of Lviv. He was also vice-chairman of the Jewish Rescue Committee which took care of the victims of the 1918/19 pogrom.^[13]

After a brief hiatus during the war, when he moved his family to Vienna, Wasser served as Chairman for over twenty years until 1939.^[14]

During 1929 and 1930, Wasser held discussions with the World Union for Progressive Judaism and Rabbi Max Lasker concerning the establishment of a liberal Jewish movement in Poland.^[15]

However, Wasser ended those discussions over concerns that establishment of a liberal movement in Poland would create tensions between the assimilationists and the supporters of Zionism in Lviv.

In the mid-1930s, he commissioned his friend and noted Polish Jewish scholar, Majer Balaban, to write a history of the Tempel Synagogue from its founding in 1848. Balaban's history of the synagogue was published in 1938 and is the only complete history of a Lviv synagogue that survived the Holocaust.

In 1936 Jubilee celebrations were held at the Tempel Synagogue for Dr. Ozjasz Wasser, chairman of the management council on the 20th anniversary of his service, and on his 70th birthday”. ^[16]

The Tempel Synagogue was destroyed by the Germans in the summer of 1941 after they invaded Poland in June of that year.

Wasser died on September 29, 1941 at the age of 76, a victim of the Holocaust. He was buried in the Lviv Jewish Cemetery.^[17]

See also

• History of the Jews in 20th-century Poland

References