15 Facts About William Rosenwald

William Rosenwald was an American businessman and philanthropist.

William Rosenwald helped establish the nationwide United Jewish Appeal in 1939 and made other charitable grants through the William Rosenwald Family Fund.

William Rosenwald's father was Julius Rosenwald, the former chairman of Sears, Roebuck and Company and a leading philanthropist whose Rosenwald Fund built 5,000 schools for black children in the South a few decades after the Civil War.

William Rosenwald was born in Wilmette, Illinois, in 1903; the second son of Julius Rosenwald and the former Augusta Nusbaum.

William Rosenwald attended the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in 1924.

William Rosenwald was employed by Sears, Roebuck starting in 1928, and was a director of the firm from 1934 to 1938.

William Rosenwald organized a family effort in the mid-1930s to provide assistance to relatives in Europe affected by the rise of Nazi Germany.

In 1938, William Rosenwald married Mary Kurtz, his second wife, with whom he had three daughters.

In January 1939, William Rosenwald's National Coordinating Committee Fund joined with Rabbi Jonah Wise of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver of the United Palestine Appeal, to form the United Jewish Appeal for Refugees and Overseas Needs.

From 1942 to 1946, William Rosenwald was one of the UJA's three national chairmen, leading the first campaign to raise more than $100 million, and led campaigns again from 1955 to 1957.

In 1974, William Rosenwald oversaw the merger of the joint campaign between United Jewish Appeal of Greater New York and the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies and was named as the first president of the combined campaign.

William Rosenwald served on the board of the Tuskegee Institute for 40 years and was a longtime board member of the New York Philharmonic.

William Rosenwald served on the executive committee of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee for five decades and was an active leader of the American Jewish Committee and the Council of Jewish Federations, among many other organizations.

William Rosenwald died at age 93 on October 31,1996, at his apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

William Rosenwald was survived by his three daughters, Nina William Rosenwald being one of them, and five grandchildren.