Adolf Kraus

Who was Adolf Kraus?

Adolf Kraus was a lawyer and Jewish leader.

At the age of 15 he left the Bohemian town of Rokycany where he had grown up and emigrated to the United States. He worked on a farm and in a factory, later settling in Chicago where he completed his law studies before becoming a lawyer. In 1897 he was the second president of the civil service commission. He also became a grand officer of B'nai B'rith and a prominent executive of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations.

Kraus had close contacts to American presidents William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson. In his position he also helped Czech and Jewish immigrants to the USA. In 1930 a commemorative plaque of Adolf Kraus was unveiled in the town of Rokycany, on the house where he spent his childhood. However in the 1940s, during the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany, the plaque was pulled down. The house was demolished in the 1980s.