MOSES, SIEGFRIED

MOSES, SIEGFRIED (1887–1974), German Zionist leader and Israel public official. Born in Lautenburg, Germany, Moses practiced as a lawyer from 1912 to 1937. In 1917 he was appointed food controller of the city of Danzig and in 1919 he became deputy director of the Union of German Municipalities, a post he held until 1920. From 1923 to 1929 he was manager of the Schocken Department Store Co. in Zwickau. In his student days he was active in the union of Jewish student fraternities (see kartell juedischer verbindungen ) and was the editor of Der Juedische Student. In 1920 he was appointed a member of the board of the Jewish Workers Aid Society in Berlin and was its executive chairman from 1921 to 1923. He was a delegate to several Zionist Congresses and was the president of the Zionist Organization of Germany during the period 1933–37. Moses was also active in Jewish communal affairs as vice chairman of the Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland, 1933–37, and as a member of the Berlin Community Council. He settled in Palestine in 1937 and assumed the post of managing director of Ha'avara (transfer of Jewish assets in Germany to Palestine). For a period of ten years (1939–49), he worked as a certified public accountant and income tax expert. He was a member of the jewish agency Delegation to the United Nations in 1947 and in 1949 was appointed Israel's first State Comptroller, a post which he held until his retirement in 1961. In 1957 he was elected president of Irgun Olei Merkaz Europa ("Association of Settlers from Central Europe") and president of the Council of Jews from Germany and of the Leo Baeck Institute. He was the chairman of the Advisory Committee of the United Restitution Organization in Israel and a member of the board of Bank Leumi. Moses wrote The Income Tax Ordinance of Palestine (1942, 1946), Jewish Post-War Claims (1944), and articles on Jewish subjects and his professional work. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: D. Lazar, Rashim be-Yisrael, 2 (1955), 132–6. (Kurt Loewenstein)