TSVI HIRSHHORN

TSVI HIRSHHORN (1900-May 1943)

            He was born in Kaminke, near Lemberg, eastern Galicia, into a small merchant’s, Hassidic household.  He studied in religious primary school, later in the yeshiva “Maḥzike velomde tora” (Upholders and students of Torah) in Lemberg, and he received rabbinic ordination.  He was a leader in Orthodox youth circles, later becoming a leader of the Tseire agudat yisrael (Agudat Yisrael youth) in Poland.  At the First World Congress of Agudat Yisrael in Marienbad in 1937, he came out publicly in favor of aliya for Hassidic youth.  Over the years 1930-1938, he was rabbi in Yavozhno, near Cracow, and later until the start of WWII in Biała Podlaska.  He was a regular contributor to Orthodox newspapers: Dos idishe togblat (The Jewish daily newspaper), Ortodoksishe yugnt-bleter (Orthodox youth pages), and Darkenu (Our pathway)—in Warsaw; Beys-yankev zhurnal (Beys-yankev magazine) in Lodz; and others.  He was author of: Tshuve konyunktor baym yunger dor (Circumstances favorable to repentance among the young generation) (Warsaw, 1938), a portion of which had been published in Ortodoksishe yugnt-bleter.  When the German occupied Biała, he escaped to Lemberg, and he lived under the Soviet occupation and then that of the Germans.  He was killed with all other Lemberg Jews when the Lemberg ghetto was liquidated.

Sources: Dr. Kh. Zaybman, Ele ezkera (These I shall remember) ((New York, 1957), pp. 203-4; written information received from R. Meyer Shwartzman in Winnipeg, Canada.