Israel Lazar

Israel Lazar, also known as Bill Lawrence and later William Lazar or Bill Lazarre, was a Communist Party organizer from Kishinev. Police arrested him after a Philadelphia election speech for William Z. Foster on August 28, 1928. He appealed his sedition conviction before serving part of a two-to-four-year sentence in Eastern State Penitentiary in 1932, where he was held under inmate number 6977. Governor Gifford Pinchot and the State Pardon Board commuted his sentence. He later served as a political commissar with the International Brigades in Spain. His daughter, writer Jane Lazarre, documented his life in her memoir. He died in December 1971.

The December 29, 1931 Daily Worker reports the Pennsylvania Superior Court upholding Lazar’s conviction and a two-year sentence for a Communist election speech supporting William Z. Foster. It demands his release, without proving two years actually served. This is the established Lazar/Bill Lawrence identity; the two- and four-year contemporary reports are retained beside the existing two-to-four-year sentence rather than treated as separate additive terms. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1931/v08-n312-NY-dec-29-1931-DW-LOC.pdf#page=1

Labor Defender, July 1932, captions a photograph of Bill Lawrence held between detectives in Philadelphia as now sentenced to four years. Existing records identify Lawrence with Israel Lazar and already preserve a two-to-four-year nominal sentence. The December 1931 two-year account and this four-year caption are both retained, without duplicate people, a replacement portrait, or additive completed service. The photograph is preserved in the source evidence. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1932/v08n07-jul-1932-LD.pdf#page=15

The June 15, 1932 Philadelphia dispatch published June 16 identifies the organizer as Bill/William Lawrence and says he was due to enter Eastern Penitentiary on Friday, June 17, under a two-to-four-year sedition sentence. June 17 was prospective in this article and is not entered as an accomplished intake. It recalls an antiwar election speech at Thirteenth and Reed Streets in September 1928, whereas other records date the arrest to August 28; that source discrepancy does not replace the established date. The report also describes his 1931 Pennsylvania and Maryland hunger-march leadership, TUUL Philadelphia organizing and Communist election-campaign work. The existing Lazar/Lawrence identity is retained without a new person or additive sentence. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1932/v09-n143-jun-16-1932-DW-LOC.pdf#page=1

A September17,1932 editorial, naming Bill Lawrence, recalls refusal by the U.S.Supreme Court to review his Pennsylvania sedition case and quotes his offending public statement that Coolidge and Kellogg were a bunch of hypocrites. This adds attributed speech and appeal context to the existing Lazar/Lawrence identity, with no second person, new custody dates or added service. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1932/v09-n223-NY-sep-17-1932-DW-LOC.pdf#page=3

Under the name Bill Lawrence, the April 17, 1931 Daily Worker reports sentencing on April 11 by Judge Smith of the Quarter Sessions Court to two to four years in Eastern Penitentiary and a $250 fine under Pennsylvania's sedition law. The ILD filed an appeal and supplied $2,000 bail. It also reports federal questioning directed toward revoking his citizenship and deporting him to Romania. A December 28, 1931 report says the Superior Court upheld his conviction in an opinion by Judge Thomas J. Baldridge. These reports concern his existing Philadelphia election-speech prosecution, not a new arrest. The separate Bill Lawrence profile appears to duplicate this identity and is retained for a distinct merge review. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1931/v08-n093-NY-apr-17-1931-DW-LOC.pdf#page=4

Labor Defender, October 1932 (PDF page 21): E. Carroll’s prison visit describes Lazar in Eastern State Penitentiary’s fifth gallery, in solitary from his first day after the 1932 execution of his earlier sentence. The warden allegedly refused ordinary association because Lazar might make political speeches. Carroll describes a twenty-minute screened visit after an hour’s wait, pallor and graying hair, poor food, cockroaches, inability to answer received letters and prisoner number 6977. The visitor says about two months had elapsed; the reported two-year sentence is nominal, not a completed duration. Existing canonical identity and custody endpoints remain unchanged. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1932/v08n10-oct-1932-LD.pdf#page=21

Jane Lazarres published memoir prologue explicitly identifies her fathers names as Itzrael Lazarovitz, William Lazar (later Lazarre), and Bill Lawrence, his Communist Party name. This first-person family account corroborates the established Israel Lazar/Bill Lawrence alias relationship and his Philadelphia political imprisonment. The duplicate Bill Lawrence listing is retained under review; its original record and case remain preserved, while this profile holds the shared photograph, fuller sourced biography and identified prison record. No dates or custody totals are changed in this reconciliation. Independent source: https://publicseminar.org/2017/09/the-communist-and-the-communists-daughter/ Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1931/v08-n093-NY-apr-17-1931-DW-LOC.pdf#page=4