LEON GELFOND

GELFOND--Leon Hillel, a former vice president of Dover Publications and past New York City Board president and Bensonhurst political action chair of Americans for Democratic Action, died at the age of 96 on May 13, 2024 in Palm Beach County, FL, where he had retired. The son of Rose (Batya) and Louis (Hersch Leib) and brother of Anna, he died surrounded by his beloved wife Renee, his children Bob and Lauren, his grandchildren Chaya, Zak, Deqel and Aviv, and his best friends Evenie and Valerie. Through his political activism since the early 1940s, he leaves a legacy of countless letters from members of Congress and the Senate and other elected officials and organizational leaders who consulted with him through the decades on issues of democracy and civil and human rights in the US and Israel (and Palestine before 1948), where his family members have lived for over one hundred years. In his work, he made books more accessible to the public by republishing works that had gone out of print and donating masses of books to libraries and prisons.