Korff, Baruch, 1914-

Baruch Korff (1914-1995) was a Ukraine native who was a rabbi.

Born in Ukraine in 1914, Baruch Korff became the seventy-second generation of rabbis in his family. Following a pogrom in 1919, during which his mother was killed before his eyes, he fled to Poland. He earned his Smicha (Yoreh, Yoreh) in Poland in 1933, and his advanced Smicha (Yadin, Yadin) in Palestine in 1935.

Emigrating to the United States, he served as headmaster of Yeshiva Torath Emeth, Brooklyn, New York, 1936-1937; rabbi of Congregation Hayim Solomon, New York City, 1938-1940; advisor to the Vaad Hahatzala-Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada, adviser to the War Refugee Board, director of the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe, and executive vice president and United Nations observer of the Political Action Committee for Palestine, 1941-1949; rabbi of Temple Israel, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 1950-1953; rabbi of congregation Agudath Achim, Taunton, Massachusetts, 1954-1971, subsequently elected rabbi emeritus; and chaplain of Massachusetts Department of Mental Health, 1954-1974.

In 1973 he founded the National Citizens Committee for Fairness to the Presidency and became an advisor to President Nixon; in 1974 he founded the President Nixon Justice Fund and the United States Citizens Congress. In 1983 he donated his farm in Rehoboth, Massachusetts to Brown University and moved to Providence, to act as consultant to the University with respect to the endowed scholarship, faculty prize, and archive funds that he founded.

In addition, since the 1950s he has travelled extensively in the Middle East under various auspices. He is also the author of The Warriors Manual (1943), Flight from Fear (1953), and The Personal Nixon (1974). (From the biographical note found in the inventory). He died 26 July 1995 in Providence, R.I. of pancreatic cancer.

From the guide to the Baruch Korff papers, 1914-1991, (L. Tom Perry Special Collections)