Chaim Gross historian Lewis Jacobs made a 30-minute feature of Gross carving, called "Tree Trunk to Head", showing Gross at work in his East Village studio on a portrait of his wife Renee, who models in the film. In 1949 Gross sketched Chaim Weizmann, President of Israel, at several functions in New York City where Weizmann was speaking. Gross began a portrait in clay and then traveled to Israel in the summer of that year hoping to be able to meet Weizmann and have him sit for a portrait. Weizmann was too ill, but Gross completed the bust in bronze later that
Chaim Weizmann in his autobiography that the failure of the international Zionist movement (between the wars) to encourage all Jews to act decisively and efficiently in great enough numbers to migrate to the Jerusalem area was the real cause for the call for a Partition deal. A deal on Partition was first formally mentioned in 1936 but not finally implemented until 1948. Again, Weizmann blamed the Zionist movement for not being adequate during the best years of the British Mandate. At the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939, Weizmann was appointed as an Honorary adviser to the British Ministry of Supply,