KALMEN GUTENBOYM

KALMEN GUTENBOYM (d. 1941)

            He was an essayist and novelist.  Over the years 1918-1919, he lived in Visoke-Litovsk.  He was the author of such books as: Fremde, noveln (Strangers, stories) (Warsaw, 1922), 189 pp.; Artur shopenhoyer, zayn lebn un filosofye (Arthur Schopenhauer, his life and philosophy) (Warsaw, 1922), 116 pp., with a second edition in 1928; Spetsyele un algemeyne relativitet-teorye (Special and general relativity theory) (Warsaw, 1923), 109 pp.; Misteryen, roman (Mysteries, a novel) (Warsaw, 1924), 214 pp.; and Der sod fun toyt (The secret of death) (Warsaw, 1928), 158 pp.  In 1936 he settled in Vilna, and there he worked on a volume entitled Araynfir in antropomorfisher filosofye (Introduction to anthropomorphic philosophy).  No one knows if he completed this work or what happened to the manuscript of it.  He contributed to Haynt (Today) in Warsaw and to the monthly Globus (The globe) also in Warsaw.  On the 300^th anniversary of the death of Spinoza, he published in Globus 4 (Warsaw, 1932) an essay entitled “Shpinoza-motivn” (Themes in Spinoza), 24 pp.

            During WWII, he was living in the Vilna ghetto.  In the first day after the Germans entered the city, civilian policemen came to his apartment, wearing armbands with swastikas, and they told him to take some soap with a towel and then took him away.  People learned later that he had been shot in Ponar.

Sources: Sh. Katsherginski, Khurbn vilne (The Holocaust in Vilna) (New York, 1947), p. 342; Vilner teg (Vilna) (August 21, 1936).