Monday 6 April 2015

MOYSHE BERSHLING (MOSHE BERSZLING)

MOYSHE BERSHLING (MOSHE BERSZLING) (1900?-July 1941)
He was born in Pyusk (Piaski), near Lublin, Poland.  He received both a Jewish and a general education.  He graduated from the Warsaw teacher’s seminary of Tsisho (Central Jewish School Organization).  In the late 1920s he moved to Lodz where he remained until 1939.  He worked as a teacher of Jewish history and literature in the Borokhov School.  He was active as well as a speaker for the left Poale-Tsiyon.  He later moved to the Communists and abandoned his school work.  He was a cofounder of “Agroyid” (Polish Jewish organization devoted to agriculture colonization in Birobidzhan) and “Gezerd” (All-Union Association for the Agricultural Settlement of Jewish Workers in the USSR) in Poland.  He was active also in the Jewish Society for Agronomy, in the Ayzenshlos Library, and in the Lodz “Theater Studio.”  From October 1939 until June 1941, he was in Bialystok, as a teacher at the local Jewish school.  His first publication was a poem that appeared in 1923 in Der yidisher arbeter (The Jewish worker) in Lemberg.  He published poems in Arbeter-tsaytung (Workers’ newspaper) in Warsaw, Nayer folksblat (New People’s newspaper) and Literarishe tribune (Literary tribune) in Lodz, Literarishe bleter (Literary leaves) and Frayhayt (Freedom) in Warsaw, and Shrpotsungen (Sprouts), among others.  He contributed to the illegal and the legal serials of the aforementioned leftist bent in Poland with articles concerning literary issues.  He edited (together with Y. Yanasevitsh and Y. Guterman) the publications: Lodzher notitsn (Lodz notices) (1935, confiscated) and Af naye vegn (Along new paths) (Lodz, 1935).  Among his pseudonyms: M. Goldshteyn.  On July 10, 1941 the Nazis arrested him and took him out of Bialystok in an unknown direction.  His subsequent fate is unknown.

Sources: Lerer-yizker-bukh (Teachers’ memory book) (New York, 1954), p. 59; Y. Guterman, in Folks-shtime (Lodz) 4 (1947); B. Heler, Dos lid iz geblibn (This poem remained) (Warsaw, 1951), pp. 43-45.


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