AVROM GUTERMAN

AVROM GUTERMAN (1896-late June 1941)

            He was born in Nowy Dwór, Warsaw region, Poland, into a Hassidic family.  He studied in religious elementary school and in synagogue study hall.  He later graduated from an art school.  Until WWII, he was living in Warsaw, where he worked as a painter.  He was an intimate friend of the writer Y. M. Vaysenberg (Isaac Meir Weissenberg).  He published articles concerning art and artists in: Undzer hofenung (Our hope), Foroys (Awake), Moment (Moment), and Literarishe bleter (Literary leaves), all in Warsaw.  When the Germans in 1939 seized Poland, he departed for Bialystok.  He could not adapt to Soviet art and he suffered from hunger.  He did not want to paint any propaganda posters for the politburo, and for that he did not receive a passport.  He left Bialystok and for a time lived with his friends, the writers Shmuel Zaromb and Sh. Vulman, in Kremenits.  At the beginning of 1941, he returned to Bialystok.  He died near Slonim under German fire, during a bombardment of a train carrying the evacuated writers and painter from Bialystok, in the first days of the German-Soviet war.

Sources: H. Fenster, Undzere farpaynikte kinstler (Our suffering artists) (Paris, 1951), p. 254; Y. Sandel, Umgekumene yidishe kinstler (Murdered Jewish artists) (Warsaw, 1957), pp. 85-89.