Wiesenfeld, Leon

Leon Wiesenfeld (1885-1971) was born Leib Wiesenfeld in Rzeszow, Galicia (now Poland), on February 7, 1885. In 1906, following five years in the United States where he gathered information about the difficulties facing Polish Jewish immigrants, he embarked on a career in journalism, writing for Yiddish, Polish, and German language newspapers in Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1912(?), he founded a Yiddish weekly newspaper, Justice, which he edited until the outbreak of World War I when he joined the Austrian army. Following the war, Wiesenfeld founded another Yiddish weekly, Yiddishe Folkzeitung ( Jewish People's Newspaper ), which was dedicated to combating anti-semitism in Poland.

Wiesenfeld married Esther Amsterdam, a school teacher from his home town of Rzeszow, in 1911. The couple immigrated to the United States in 1920, settling first in New York City where Wiesenfeld joined the staff of the Jewish Daily Forward. He left the Forward after only a few months because he disagreed with the newspaper's socialist and non-Zionist editorial policies. Wiesenfeld then worked for the Jewish World of Philadelphia and the Jewish Journal in Brooklyn, New York.

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