Dr. Nachum Goldmann was the co-founder and first chairman of the Conference of Presidents, which he led from May 1955 to May 1959.

Born in a shtetl in the Pale of Settlement, Goldmann and his family moved to Germany, where he studied law and philosophy. An ardent Zionst from a young age, he visited Palestine in 1913 for four months, publishing his impressions. Later, he endeavored to gain Kaiser Wilhelm’s support for the Zionist idea. In the 1920s he founded the Eschkol Publication Society, where he published a Zionist periodical, and initiated the Encyclopaedia Judaica project, editing 10 volumes of a German-language Encyclopedia Judaica; in the 1960s he sponsored the publication in Israel of the definitive English-language volume.

Dr. Goldmann was stripped of his German citizenship in 1935 and moved to New York, where he represented the Jewish Agency for several years. In 1936, with Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, he founded the World Jewish Congress (WJC), and served as its president from 1951 to 1978.

Dr. Goldmann was largely responsible for initiating negotiations with West Germany on the payment of reparations to Israel and indemnification for Jewish victims of Nazism. In 1951, as the Chairman of the Executive Committee off the Jewish Agency, he convened a meeting in New York of 23 major Jewish organizations to address the potential for an agreement with West Germany for reparations to victims of Nazism. The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, also known as the Claims Conference, emerged from this meeting

The preeminent international Jewish leader in an era extending from the 1930s to the 1970s, Dr. Goldmann also served as president of the World Zionist Organization (1956-1968), president of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, president of the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, and president of the Conference of Jewish Organizations (COJO).

Nachum Goldmann passed away in 1982.