ALTER
GELB (1908-1942)
He was born in Lodz, Poland, into a
working class household. He received a
secular education. He was active in his
childhood and youth in the Bundist organization “SKIF” (Sotsyalistishe kinder-farband,
or Socialist children’s union), and “Tsukunft” (Future), the Bundist youth
group. He was later a Yiddish teacher in
the Medem School. He worked as the
librarian for the Bronislav Groser Library and manager of the “Kultur lige”
(Culture league) in Lodz. With the outbreak
of WWII in 1939, he escaped to Bialystok, where he was employed in various
trades and later as a medic for transport laborers who were sent to work deep
in Russia. He was arrested because of
his “Bundism” and exiled to a camp in northern Siberia and there he died.
He began writing poetry and articles
on various topics for Lodzher veker
(Lodz alarm) in 1928. He later published
in Inzel (Island) in Lodz, Os (Letter) in Lodz-Warsaw, and Nayer folksblat (New people’s newspaper)
in Lodz. He wrote a longer work, “Der
yidisher lezer un di yidishe literatur” (The Yiddish reader and Yiddish
literature) pursuant to his research on Jewish libraries in Poland, which was
never published because of the war.
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