Victor Rabinowitz, Founder and President of the National Lawyers Guild

Victor Rabinowitz, one of the founders of the National Lawyers Guild in 1937 and national President from 1967 to 1970, passed away peacefully at his home Friday evening. According to one of his law partners, Michael Krinsky (he gave his email mkrinsky@rbskl.com.) the family will be planning a memorial, perhaps in a few weeks, but no date has been set yet.

Publishers Weekly described Victor in its 1996 review of his autobiograpy "Unrepentant Leftist: A Lawyer's Memoir" as follows:

"Americans have "never been kind to radicals," writes Rabinowitz, a founder of the National Lawyers Guild, defender of prosecuted Communists, friend of trade unionists, the first lawyer the Rosenbergs turned to (though as he was already representing an accused spy, he advised other counsel) and "the lawyer for Cuba." Rabinowitz has taken on the government often, beginning with the notorious section 9 (h) of the 1945 Taft-Hartley Act restricting union collective bargaining and then the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Rabinowitz represented some of those called up by HUAC and in so doing faced public scorn and the combined malice of Joseph McCarthy (a man who, says Rabinowitz, "showed not the slightest hint of humanity") and Roy Cohn (whom he calls the most vicious of "all the evil men I've encountered"). Rabinowitz persuasively describes the devastating consequences of the Cold War mentality on the First Amendment rights of federal employees, Army personnel, aliens, teachers and the Hollywood set. Later, in 1964, 70 lawyers went south under the auspices of the National Lawyers Guild to help the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). For his efforts, Rabinowitz was arrested ("only once", he says), but then his stand against McCarthy had already been awarded with a HUAC investigation into his activities and with FBI surveillance that extended nearly 20 years beginning in the early 1950s. Even the FBI described Rabinowitz as "an agile-minded labor attorney," but he was also clearly a man of courage and commitment. This an inspiring, engaging memoir appropriate for a time when "liberal," let alone "leftist," is almost as sure a condemnation as "Communist" once was. "

(A longer review of "Unrepentant Leftist: A Lawyer's Memoir", by John Mage, can be found in Monthly Review at http://www.monthlyreview.org/1196mage.htm .)