ARN VOL

ARN VOL (b. 1894)

            He was born in Drohobych, eastern Galicia.  He received a Jewish and a general education.  He graduated from a Polish high school.  In 1911, while still a student at the sixth level in high school, he and Nosn Buksboym founded the “Circle of Jewish Socialist Students of Labor Zionist Youth” in Galicia.  Until 1921 he was part of the leading group within the left Labor Zionism in Poland, and later he moved over to the Communists.  For a time he was imprisoned in a concentration camp at Kartuz-Bereza, from which he returned disappointed in Stalinism.  He became thereafter one of the theoreticians of Trotskyism in Poland.  He survived the years of WWI by staying on the “Aryan side,” working as a peasant in a village.  He later took part in the Warsaw Uprising of August 1944.  In postwar Poland, he was a cofounder and member of the executive of the revived union of Jewish writings in Lodz.  He began writing in 1911 in the Polish student publications of Labor Zionism, Nasze Hasło (Our catchword) in Lemberg, and later he switched to Yiddish and contributed current-events articles and philosophical-literary essays to: Der nayer dor (The new generation) and Zibn teg (Seven days) in Lemberg; Di yidishe arbeter-yugnt (The Jewish working youth) and Der yidisher arbeter (The Jewish worker) in Warsaw; Literarishe tribune (Literary tribune) in Lodz; and in the illegal professional and literary publications of Jewish Communists in Poland.  Over the years 1945-1949, he published in Dos naye lebn (The new life) and Yidishe shriftn (Yiddish writings), among others.  His last article, “Marksizm un filozofye” (Marxism and philosophy), Yidish shriftn 2-3 (1949, in Lodz), elicited a sharp polemic from the Communists leading to a chasm between Yidishe shriftn and Folksshtime (Voice of the people) in Warsaw.  He was later arrested and since then he has disappeared without a trace.  He also wrote under the pen name: A. Yakubovitsh.

Sources: N. Buksboym, Yidishe arbeter-pinkes (Records of Jewish laborers) (Warsaw, 1928), p. 290; B. Kutsher, Geven amol varshe (As Warsaw once was) (Paris, 1955), pp. 281, 311.

Khayim Leyb Fuks