Ex-Libris Julius F. & Cora Fohs

Max Pollak

This is a drawing for an Ex-Libris for oil geologist Julius F. Fohs and his wife Cora. The bottom drawing is of the "Ella Fohs Camp" in memory of their daughter Ella, who served as Past President of the New York Section's Junior Auxiliary.

Julius and Cora Fohs established the Fohs Research Institute in 1937to help address “practical and scientific problems having to do with the rebuilding of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.” Julius Fohs (1884-1965) had been engaged in that rebuilding, lending his geological expertise and providing financial support since his first visit to Palestine in 1919. Mr. Fohs conducted mineral and water resource assessments of Palestine and mapped oil deposits in the broader Middle East region. In a 1946 talk to faculty and students at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology, he presented a vision of a collaborative Middle East economy enhanced by those resources. He received an honorary doctorate degree from the Technion in 1957.

In 1944 the Institute changed its name to Fohs Foundation. The founders managed and funded the Foundation for its first three decades, with a board including the founders’ daughter, Frances Fohs Sohn (who still serves as its Chair) and Susan Brandeis Gilbert, daughter of American Zionist leader and Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis.

While dedicated largely to Palestine and Israel, the foundation also funded Camp Ella Fohs, a summer camp (no longer operating) for underprivileged Jewish children from New York City. Following the death of the founders, and over the next four decades, Frances Fohs Sohn, together with her husband and holocaust survivor Fred Sohn, managed the Foundation. They also added to its endowment in the context of a reconfirmation of the Foundation’s Israel focus. The foundation now operates as a charitable trust under the laws of the State of Oregon.