AVROM GLIKSMAN

AVROM GLIKSMAN (September 19, 1883-1943)

            He was born in Kutno, Warsaw region, Poland, into a wealthy Hassidic family which, according to his later recounting of it, was to become the “only Enlightened Jewish home in the town.”  He studied in religious elementary school together with Sholem Ash (Asch), and together they read in Gliksman’s home Hebrew-language writings of the Jewish Enlightenment, taught themselves a little German from Mendelson’s translation of Psalms which was published in the Jewish alphabet, and subsequently read the works of Schiller, Goethe, and Heine.  Together with Ash, in 1900 he arrived in Warsaw and began to write.  His first sketch, “Lekhu neranana” (Come, let us sing), was published in Luaḥ aḥiasaf yubeli in 1901.  He then left for Berlin and for a full nineteen years was apart from the Jewish surroundings, with a short interruption around 1911, when he came to Warsaw and published articles in Shtral (Ray [of light]), using such pen names as “Khoyker vemekabl,” “Hegyon,” and Dr. Hampelitsh.  He also published his writings in Unzer lebn (Our life) and Haynt (Today).  In Berlin he graduated from middle school and then left for Leipzig, where he graduated from a commercial college, and later he studied political economy in the local university.  He received his doctorate in Zurich, Switzerland.  He subsequently studied philosophy and social science in Jena, Germany, and in Paris.  He continued to wander over Western Europe, for many years serving as the Zurich correspondent for Frankfurter Zeitung, and for a certain period of time was also the editor of the commercial division of this newspaper.  He also published for other German and Swiss serials.  During WWI, he wrote from Zurich for the well-known British weekly newspaper, The Economist, in London.  In 1920 he settled in Warsaw, where he once again took up writing in Yiddish and Hebrew, publishing articles mainly on philosophical themes for: Hatsfira (The siren), Moment (Moment), Haynt, Lodzher tageblat (Lodz daily newspaper), Almanakh-moment (Moment almanac)—“Der amti-semitizm als sotsyal-psikhologishe ershaynung” (Anti-Semitism as a social psychological phenomenon)—Bikher-velt (Book world)—on Natanson’s Shpinoza un bergson (Spinoza and Bergson)—and Literarishe bleter (Literary leaves)—on Immanuel Kant, Sigmund Freud, Chaim Zhitlovsky, and others.  He later became a regular contributor to Unzer ekspres (Our express) and Radyo (Radio), the afternoon edition of Moment.

            He also was a lecturer, and in his lectures for which he traveled over many towns and villages he was the first to popularize Freud’s scientific theories among the Jewish population of Poland.  With the outbreak of WWII, he escaped from Warsaw to Vilna, was in the Vilna ghetto, and in September 1943 was deported to Treblinka.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 1; A. Almi, Literarishe nesies (Literary travels) (Warsaw, 1931), p. 112; Avrom Reyzen, Epizodn fun mayn lebn (Episodes from my life)., part 3 (Vilna, 1935), pp. 257-60; Dr. R. Feldshuh, Gezelshaftlekher leksikon (Community handbook) (Warsaw, 1939); Literarishe bleter (Warsaw) (December 19, 1939), Gliksman’s writing about the youth of Sholem Asch; Sh. Katsherginski, Khurbn vilne (The Holocaust in Vilna) (New York, 1947), p. 186; M. Ravitsh, Mayn leksikon (My lexicon), vol. 2 (Montreal, 1947).