KALMEN-KHAYIM HEYSHERIK

KALMEN-KHAYIM HEYSHERIK (ca. 1890-October 1941)

            He was born in Turek, Lodz district, Poland, into a merchant Hassidic family.  When he was young he moved with his parents to Warsaw.  Until age fifteen he studied in religious elementary school, synagogue study hall, and in a small Hassidic synagogue based on the views of the Kotsker rebbe.  He later acquired worldly knowledge through self-study.  He was drafted into the Russian army in 1911.  For a time during WWI, he was held in German captivity, and in 1919 he returned to Poland.  He kept a diary during WWI, and from it he later produced his books: In fayer un blut, memuarn fun der velt-milkhome (In fire and blood, memoirs of the world war), four parts (Warsaw, 1926-1928), 384 pp.; Laydn, tog-bukh 1919-1923 (Suffering, diary 1919-1923) (Warsaw, 1928), 88 pp.; On a tsil (Without a purpose), novellas and stories (Warsaw, 1929), 149 pp.; On a heym, familyen khronik (Homeless, family chronicle) (Warsaw, 1932), 192 pp.—all of these books appeared in a number of editions.  Heysherik also published novellas, stories, and travel accounts in: Haynt (Today), Unzer ekspres (Our express), Literarishe bleter (Literary leaves), and in the publications of leftist writers’ groups in Poland.  In his books and novellas, he gave expression to the man of the people and his soul, which was full of goodness and faith.  During WWII, on his own he took to bringing Jewish writers and their wives from Nazi-occupied Poland to Vilna, and he on more than one occasion risked his life on their dangerous missions.  He was later confined to the Vilna ghetto, and he was transferred from the first to the second ghetto.  He attempted to escape, but he was caught and brought back to the ghetto.  During the liquidation of the second ghetto, he was murdered together with thousands of other Vilna Jews by the Germans in Ponar, near Vilna.

Sources: Sh. Vinter, in Literarishe bleter (Warsaw) (September 16, 1927); M. Almi, in Literarishe bleter (March 23, 1928); Arbeter-tsaytung (Warsaw) (June 28, 1929); M. B. Shteyn, in Unzer hofenung (Warsaw) (April 1928); Froym Kaganovski, in Literarishe bleter (July 24, 1936); D. Tsharni (Charney), in Tsukunft (New York) (January 1943); M. Ravitsh, Mayn leksikon (My lexicon), vol. 1 (Montreal, 1945), pp. 74-76; Sh. Katsherginski, in Tsukunft (September 1946); Katsherginski, Khurbn vilne (The Holocaust in Vilna) (New York, 1947), p. 188; Y. Y. Trunk, Di yidishe proze in poyln in der tekufe tsvishn beyde velt-milkhomes (Yiddish prose in Poland in the era between the two world wars) (Buenos Aires, 1949), p. 152; Berl Kuczer, Geven amol varshe (As Warsaw once was) (Paris, 1955), see index.

Khayim Leyb Fuks