Minna Weizmann Minna Weizmann Minna Weizmann (1889–?) was a Russian Jewish doctor who served in Syria and Palestine during World War I. Weizmann also served as a spy for Germany. Weizmann was born in present-day Motal, Belarus (then part of the Russian Empire) to a prominent family. Her parents were Oizer and Rachel Czermerinsky Weizmann. Weizmann's most famous sibling was Chaim Weizmann, the President of Zionist Organization and the first President of Israel. Weizmann attended medical school in Berlin. She was a socialist who hated the czarist government. In 1913, she immigrated to Palestine, where she became one of the few female
Chaim Weizmann against "repressive cruelty" to the Arabs. He regularly travelled by train to London to discuss spiritual and cultural Zionism with writers like Ginzberg whose pen name was Ahad Ha'am. He stayed at Ginzberg's home in Hampstead, whence he lobbied Whitehall, beyond his job as Director of the Admiralty for Manchester. Zionists believed that anti-Semitism led directly to the need for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Weizmann first visited Jerusalem in 1907, and while there, he helped organize the Palestine Land Development Company as a practical means of pursuing the Zionist dream, and to found the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Although