NOSN-MIKHL (NATHAN MICHAEL) GELBER

NOSN-MIKHL (NATHAN MICHAEL) GELBER (May 27, 1891-September 24, 1966)

            He was born in Lemberg, and from 1901 he lived with his parents in Brody.  He studied Hebrew at home and in general received a nationalist Jewish education.  In 1910 he graduated from high school in Brody, and then went on to study philosophy and history at the Universities of Vienna and Berlin.  In 1914 he received from the University of Vienna his Ph.D.  As a lieutenant he spent the full four years of WWI on the field of battle in Serbia and Italy, and he was awarded with several war medals.  In November 1918, he returned to Vienna and became general secretary of the delegation of the Jewish National Council in Eastern Galicia, assumed a similar post in the All-Austrian Organization of the Zionist Party, and was also director of the Jewish National Fund in Austria.  He was a delegate to Zionist congresses and to the international conference in The Hague for the League of Nations.  In 1932 he departed for Israel and became a permanent resident of Jerusalem.  He was seriously wounded in 1948 during the bombing of the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem, and he remained blind thereafter in one eye.

            He began writing in 1910.  His first articles on historical themes were published in the Polish Jewish Moriah in Lemberg, Haszachar (The dawn) in Breslau, and Yevreyskaya starina (Jewish antiquity) in St. Petersburg, among others.  In the years of his literary beginnings, he wrote articles also for Togblat (Daily newspaper) in Lemberg, Dos yudishe folk (The Jewish people) in Warsaw, and Jüdische Morgenpost (Jewish morning mail) in Vienna.  From 1919 he published longer and shorter historical treatises in such Jewish serials as: Wiener Morgenzeitung (Vienna morning newspaper), Lemberger Zeitung (Lemberg newspaper), and Zionistische bläter (Zionist pages)—in Vienna; Haynt-yoyvl-bukh (Jubilee volume of Haynt) in Warsaw; Yivo-bleter (Pages from YIVO), Historishe un ekonomishe shriftn fun yivo (Historical and economic writings from YIVO), Fun noentn over (From the recent past)—in Vilna; Lodzher visnshaftlekhe shriftn (Lodz scholarly writings) (1938); Di goldene keyt (The golden chain) in Tel Aviv; and Morgn-zhurnal (Morning journal) in New York.  In Hebrew: Hatsfira (The siren) in Warsaw, Haolam (The world) in London and Jerusalem, Davar (Word), Haarets (The land), Haboker (This morning), Hatsofe (The spectator), Maariv (Evening), Yediot aḥaronot (Late news), Hamedina (The country), Hador (The generation), Haavar (The past), Hamizraḥ (The east), Hamolad (The birth), Sefer tarnopol (The book of Tarnopol), Sefer stinslbob (The book of Stinslbob), and many others, over three decades of publications in Israel; and in a long list of foreign-language periodicals and magazines in Austria, Germany, Poland, France, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romania, England, and Israel.  He also contributed to an array of encyclopedias and handbooks in various languages.  In book form, he published some fifteen works of varying length in Hebrew, German, Polish, and other languages.  He edited the volume Lvov (Lemberg), in the series Haentsiklopediya shel galuyot (Encyclopedia of the Diaspora) (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, 1956).  Among his pseudonyms: Stanislovski and Ben-Nakhman.  He was living in Jerusalem, where he passed away.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 1; Sefer ishim (Who’s who) (Tel Aviv, 1934), p. 134; D. Tidhar, Entsiklopedyah leḥalutse hayishuv uvonav (Encyclopedia of the founders and builders of Israel), vol. 1 (Tel Aviv, 1947), pp. 350-51; Dr. Y. Shatski, in Yivo-bleter (New York) (1956), pp. 238-44; G. Bader, Medina veḥakhameha (The state and its sages) (New York, 1934), p. 67; Dr. Z. F. Pinot, Hapoel hatsair (Youth labor) (Tel Aviv, 1956); B. Shukhtman, in Kiryat sefer (Jerusalem) (1955), 151-52; Dr. M. Handel, in Davar (Tel Aviv) (March 7, 1958); Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. VII, Jüdisches Lexikon III; Grosse Jüdische Nazional-Biographien, vol. II, pp. 398-99; Who’s Who in World Jewry (New York, 1955); The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia (New York, 1941), vol. 4.