ARYE-LEYB HOLENDERSKI

ARYE-LEYB HOLENDERSKI (1879-April 7, 1940)

            He was born in Lodz, Poland, into a semi-assimilated family of merchants and factor owners.  He graduated from a Russian-Polish commercial school in Lodz, and studied business in Germany and Switzerland.  From his student years forward, he was active in the Jewish labor movement; he was also a member of the Labor Zionists in the former Russia and of its central committee in Poland.  He lived in Lodz from 1915 until WWII.  He was one of the founders (in 1915) of the Jewish school association and one of the authors of the famed petition with over 30,000 Jewish signatures to the German occupying authorities in Lodz concerned with a Jewish public school; he was a member of the first Workmen’s Circle in Lodz (1918); he chaired the “Borochov School trusteeship” in Poland and the Borochov School in Lodz and was a cofounder of Labor Zionist cooperatives in Lodz.  Between 1916 and 1939, he chaired the Lodz Committee of the Left Labor Zionists, was a member of the Lodz city council and of the Jewish community (where he led a fight for the rights of the Yiddish language and secular Jewish culture), and he withstood insults from the Polish city council majority for his Yiddish speeches.  He was a regular contributor to Arbeter-tsaytung (Workers’ newspaper) in Warsaw (1913-1939) and to Lodzher arbeter (Lodz worker) (1933-1938), and he co-edited the latter—in these he published (under the pen names Arye, Leyb, and Viktor) articles on a variety of themes.  In September 1939 when the Germans were approaching Lodz, he escaped to Warsaw and there he survived the siege.  Later, after returning to Lodz, he was deported to the German concentration camps of Dachau and Oranienburg where he was tortured to his death.

Sources: A. Tartakover, in Idisher kemfer (New York) (June 21, 1940); Y. Kener, Kvershnit (Cross-section) (New York, 1947), pp. 247-51; Kh. Brand, in Zamlbukh mulye (Mulye anthology) (Tel Aviv, 1955), pp. 42-45; Sh. Eydelman, in Zamlbukh mulye, pp. 168-79; Kh. L. Fuks, in Fun noentn over 3 (New York, 1957); N. Nir, in Asupot (Tel Aviv) (June 1957); Nir, Pirke ḥayim (Chapter of life) (Tel Aviv, 1958), pp. 89, 101.

Khayim Leyb Fuks