SHIMSHON BROTMAKHER

SHIMSHON BROTMAKHER (b. 1897)

He was born in Horodok, near Bialystok.  He came from a rabbinic family.  He studied in religious primary schools and in the Slobodka and Mir yeshivas.  He acquired much secular learning and literature through self-education.  He was a teacher of Yiddish and Jewish history in the Bialystok high school run by Tsisho (Central Jewish School Organization).  He wrote essays and gave lectures in Jewish literature.  He contributed to Undzer lebn (Our life) in Bialystok and in the Poale-Tsiyon press.  In June 1942 he was arrested by the Soviet authorities.  He and Peysekh Kaplan were the organizers in the Bialystok ghetto of a cultural office, and he worked as a teacher in schools.  He was murdered in the Bialystok ghetto.

Sources: Peysakh Kaplan, Byalistoker leksikon (Bialystok handbook) (Bialystok, 1935); B. Mark, Lerer-yizker-bukh (Teachers’ memory book) (New York, 1954); B. Mark, Der oyfshtand in byalistoker geto (The uprising in the Bialystok ghetto) (Warsaw, 1950); R. Rayzner, Der umkum fun byalistoker yidntum (The mass murder of Jews in Bialystok) (Melbourne, 1948).