Behrmann, Vasili Lazarovich

Russian lawyer; son of Lazar Jakovlevich Behrmann; born in Mitau, Russia, Sept. 15, 1862; died at Cairo, Egypt, March 18, 1896. He received his early education at his father's school in St. Petersburg, passed through the gymnasium, and then studied law at the University of St. Petersburg, whence he graduated in 1885. While at the university he edited the foreign news department of the periodical "Russki Yevrei" (Russian Hebrew), published by his father. After the anti-Jewish riots in South Russia in 1881 he became an ardent Zionist, an active promoter of the Palestine movement in Russia, and a useful collaborator of the Society for the Promotion of Education Among the Jews of Russia.

In 1884 Behrmann published a collection of articles entitled "Palestina," and in 1892 another collection, Sion (Zion). In 1894 he visited England on a mission to collect information about the English emigration system. He left in manuscript a work on "How to Regulate Russian-Jewish Emigration."

Bibliography:

  * Vengerov, Kritiko-Biograficheski Slovar, iii. 91, St. Petersburg, 1892;
  * Aḥiasaf, p. 301, Warsaw, 1896;
  * and private sources.



H. R.