NETTER, CHARLES:
French philanthropist; born at Strasburg in 1828; died at Jaffa, Palestine, Oct. 2, 1882. He studied at Strasburg and Belfort, and then engaged in business in Paris. He was one of the founders of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, and for a long time his house was its only home. The work with which his name is most closely connected is the foundation of the agricultural school at Jaffa; and he devoted several years of his life to promoting agriculture among the Jews of Palestine. It was Netter who, at the end of 1876, submitted to the conference at Constantinople the memorandum in favor of the Jews of the East, prepared by the meeting convened about that time by the Alliance Israélite at Paris. In 1878 he went to Berlin, with someother members of the central committee, to lay before the congress the memoir of the Alliance in favor of the same Jews and to support their claims, which had been formally recognized by the Treaty of Berlin. With two other members of the committee he went to Madrid in 1880 to maintain before a European conference the right of the Jews of Morocco to protection.
In 1881, when the disturbances in Russia drove thousands of unfortunate Jews from Brody and the Alliance was desirous of sending them assistance, Netter volunteered to discharge the difficult mission. He was the first to arrive there, and lived for weeks among the unhappy refugees, arranging a plan of emigration to America. On his return to Paris he was appointed secretary of the special committee established in that city for the Russian work. From morning till night his house was besieged by the Russian refugees, who found in him an untiring protector. When death overtook him he was visiting the agricultural school at Jaffa. A monument has been erected over his grave by the Alliance Israélite Universelle.
