ALTER GELB

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.

Source: Kh. L. Fuks, in Fun noentn over 3 (New York, 1957).