BER HILDEBRAND

BER HILDEBRAND (1887-November 3, 1918)

            He was born in Warsaw, Poland, into a well-to-do family, followers of the Jewish Enlightenment movement.  He graduated from a Polish high school and studied the humanities at the Universities of Berlin and Paris.  In 1903 he joined the Bund.  In 1905 he was secretary of the leather-workers’ union in Warsaw, was arrested and tortured by the Tsarist secret police, and contracted a lung ailment.  In 1909 he settled in St. Petersburg and was expelled from there in 1910.  He then returned to Warsaw, where he turned his attention to teaching and writing.  He began publishing poetry and translations of the work of European revolutionary poets in 1907 in the illegal publications of the Bund.  He contributed to Lebns-fragen (Life issues) in Warsaw (1916-1918), and there he published translations, among other things, from German and French.  He also placed pieces in Di tsayt (The times) in St. Petersburg, the anthology Unzer shtime (Our voice) 1 (Vilna), and Arbeter-luekh (Workers’ calendar) in Warsaw 1 and 2 (1916-1917).  He also brought out a pamphlet, Arum mile-skandal (Concerning a circumcision scandal) (Warsaw, 1908), 32 pp., in which he defended Sholem Asch against the attacks on him at the time.  He left behind in manuscript Yiddish translations of European proletarian poets, H. Heyerman’s drama of fishermen, Di hofenung (The hope), and stories by Multatuli [Eduard Douwes Dekker].  He died in Warsaw.

Source: V. Sh. (Shulman), in Lebns-fragn (Warsaw) (November 8, 1918).