LEYBELE OLSHANYETSKI

LEYBELE OLSHANYETSKI (1905-December 31, 1934)

Born in Lodz, Poland into a well-to-do, intellectual family.  He received both a religious and a general education.  At age fourteen, while a student in high school, he joined the socialist movement and became active among his fellow pupils and labor youth in the Bundist “Tsukunft.”  He was a magnificent speaker and lecturer who had a formidable influence on Jewish youth.  In 1923 he settled in Warsaw where he worked in the association of Jewish cooperatives in Poland.  He began writing while still in high school—poems and discourses on literary questions.  He contributed to Lodzher veker (Lodz alarm) and Yugnt-veker (Youth alarm) in Warsaw, serving for a time on the editorial board of the latter.  He died in Warsaw from tuberculosis.  He used such pen names as Leybele and L. Olsha.

Sources: Perets, in Yugnt-veker (Warsaw) (January 27, 1934); Y. Sh. Herts, Di geshikhte fun a yugnt (The history of a youth) (New York, 1946), pp. 356-57; S. Nutkevitsh, Doyres bundistn (Generations of Bundists), vol. 2 (New York, 1956); Kh. L. Fuks, “Dos yidishe literatur lodzh” (Yiddish literature in Lodz), Fun noentn over 3 (New York, 1956).