Lewis Strauss - Early Life

Early Life

Strauss was born in Charleston, West Virginia. His father (also named Lewis Strauss) was a successful shoe wholesaler. At the age of 10, he permanently lost the vision in his right eye in a rock fight. This injury later disqualified him from normal military service. His family relocated to Richmond, Virginia. He was valedictorian of his high school class, though due to typhoid fever in his senior year, he was unable to graduate with his class.

Strauss had planned to study physics at the University of Virginia. But when he finally graduated, his family's business had had a downturn, and they could not afford to send him. For the next three years Strauss worked as a traveling shoe salesman for his father's company. He was the company's top salesman, and saved enough money for college tuition.

However, Strauss' mother had also encouraged him to perform some kind of public or humanitarian service. It was 1917. World War I was raging in Europe, and Herbert Hoover was head of the Committee for Relief in Belgium (CRB). Strauss volunteered to serve without pay as Hoover's assistant. Strauss worked hard and well, and soon was promoted to Hoover's private secretary, a post in which he made powerful contacts that would serve him later on. His service with the CRB lasted till 1919.

Strauss himself became a man of influence: acting on behalf of a representative of Finland, he persuaded Hoover to urge President Woodrow Wilson to recognize Finland's independence from Russia.

Besides the CRB and its successor, the American Relief Administration, Strauss worked with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JJDC) to relieve the suffering of Jewish refugees, who were often neglected by other bodies. The poor treatment of Polish and Russian Jews that Strauss witnessed instilled in him a powerful anti-Communist sentiment. At the JJDC, Strauss came to the attention of Felix M. Warburg, a partner in the investment bank Kuhn, Loeb & Co. in New York.

Warburg brought Strauss to Kuhn Loeb, where he became a full partner in 1929 and was active in the firm until 1941. During this period Strauss became wealthy.

Strauss also became a leader in Jewish causes and organizations. For instance, in 1933 he was a member of the Executive Committee of the American Jewish Committee. However, he was not a Zionist and opposed the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. He instead supported assimilation of Jews as equal citizens of the nations where they lived. He recognized the brutality of governments like Nazi Germany; in 1938 he joined with Hoover and Bernard Baruch in supporting the establishment of a refugee state in Africa as a safe haven for all persecuted people, not just Jews.