Oscar Straus (politician)
Oscar Solomon Straus (23 December 1850–3 May 1926), was Secretary of Commerce and Labor under President Theodore Roosevelt from 1906 to 1909. Straus was the first Jew to serve as a Presidential Cabinet Secretary. He was born in Germany and first served as United States Minister to Turkey from 1887 to 1889 and again from 1898 to 1899. He left the Commerce Department in 1909 when William Howard Taft became president and became U.S. Ambassador to Turkey until 1910. In 1912, he ran unsuccessfully for Governor of New York. The Straus family had several influential members including Straus' grandson Roger W. Straus, Jr, who started the publishing company of Farrar, Straus and Giroux; his brother, Isidor Straus, who served as a representative from New York City's 15th District, was one of the owners of the department store R. H. Macy & Co, and perished aboard the RMS Titanic in 1912; and nephew Jesse Isador Straus, Ambassador to France from 1933 to 1936. Washington, D.C commemorates the achievements of this famous Jewish-German-American statesman in the Oscar Straus Memorial.
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