ZALMEN HERTS

ZALMEN HERTS (1875-April 30, 1938)

            He was born in Stanislav (Stanislavov), eastern Galicia, into a working-class family.  From his youth he was active in the Zionist youth movement, later becoming a business employee, while remaining active in the employees’ union “Haivri” and in the “Tsiyon” (Zion) association in Lemberg.  He later served as director of the Labor Zionist Party in Galicia.  He published in Haivri (The Jew) in Lemberg correspondence pieces and articles about the lives of Jewish workers.  He also contributed to: Lemberger togblat (Lemberg daily newspaper) and Der yudisher arbayter (The Jewish worker), in which among other things he placed a series of articles that would come out as a pamphlet: Di natsyonale goles-politik (National diaspora policy) (Lemberg, 1909), 32 pp.  The pamphlet had special significance as a document on the economic conditions of Jews, as well as a more general look at the relationship between politics and culture in Galicia at that time.  At the time of the war between Ukraine and Poland in 1918, Herts was one of the local Jewish community leaders who signed a proclamation before Lemberg Jews to establish a Jewish self-defense.  He lived thereafter in Germany, France, and Belgium, where he contributed to the Labor Zionist press.  He lived illegally underground during WWII.  He died in Brussels.

Sources: Der yidisher arbeter pinkes (Warsaw, 1928), p. 366; Y. Kener, Kvershnit (Cross-section) (New York, 1947), p. 109; Dr. Y. Tenenboym, Galitsye, mayn alte heym (Galicia, my old home) (Buenos Aires, 1952), see index; Dr. N. M. Gelber, in Pirke galitsiya (Chapters on Galicia) (Tel Aviv, 1957); A. Rays, in Pirke galitsiya, p. 307.

Khayim Leyb Fuks