Liebmann Hersch

Pesach Liebmann Hersch (25 May 1882 – 9 June 1955), also Liebman Hersh , was a professor of demography and statistics at the University of Geneva, and an intellectual of the Jewish Labor Bund, whose pioneering work on Jewish migration achieved international recognition in the period after the First World War.

Biography Liebmann Hersch was born in the small Lithuanian town of Pamūšis, in the district of Šiauliai, in what was then the Russian Empire. He was the son of Meyer Dovid Hersch (1858–1933) and Hannah-Dvorah Hersch (née Blumberg; 1860–1890). Liebmann's father was a maskil and a journalist who published articles in various Hebrew journals, including Ha-Maggid and Ha-Melitz. Liebmann was the oldest of six sons. Within a year or two of his birth his family moved to his father's hometown of Joniškis (Yanishok), where a younger brother was born, in 1884. Subsequently, they moved again, to Šiauliai (Shavel), his mother's hometown, where, between 1886 and 1890, four more sons were born. Liebmann's mother died in 1890, at the age of 30, seven weeks after giving birth to her youngest child.

In 1891 Meyer Dovid Hersch traveled to South Africa, where he worked as a correspondent for the Hebrew press in Eastern Europe. During their father's four-year sojourn in South Africa Liebmann and his brothers were in the care of a teacher in the town. where Liebmann attended high school, and participated in Zionist youth activities.

At the University of Geneva, Liebmann Hersch studied sociology. He became an instructor in the department of statistics and demography in 1909,

In connection with his Bundist activities, Hersch published articles on political and social issues in the Yiddish, Polish and Russian press, with a focus on emigration and the problems of Jewish nationalism. In 1931 Hersch's article "International Migration of the Jews," which became a classic work on the topic, appeared in the collection International Migrations (volume 2), edited by Walter Willcox and Imre Ferenczi, and published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in New York.

During World War II, Hersch was active on behalf of Jews in Nazi-occupied countries, and those who had taken refuge in Switzerland, and was a representative on the American Jewish Labor Committee.

Hersch visited Palestine for the first time in 1947 as a participant in the World Congress for Jewish Studies in Jerusalem. He described it as a "jewel on a volcano." He then became much less opposed to Zionism than the official Bund position and advocated support for the Yishuv.

In 1954 Hersch was elected as chair of the World Population Conference of the United Nations (the fourth international conference for demography and statistics), held in Rome. At that time he was also president of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population.

Personal life Liebmann Hersch was married to Liba Hersch (née Lichtenbaum), of Warsaw. They had three children, Jeanne (b. 1910), Irène (b. 1917) and Joseph (b. 1925). Their daughter Jeanne Hersch became a noted philosopher at the University of Geneva.