AVROM VASERTSUG

AVROM VASERTSUG (1901-1942)

            He was born in Lubin (Labun), near Vlotslavek (Włocławek), Poland, into a family of landowners.  He studied in religious primary school and yeshiva, and he received rabbinical ordination.  He later became a follower of the Jewish Enlightenment and settled in Warsaw where he graduated from the state seminary for Jewish religious teachers.  From 1926 until WWII, he worked as a teacher in state schools for Jewish children in Siedlce.  He began writing stories for children in Grininke beymelekh (Little green trees) in Vilna, and he later published as well in: Mezritsher lebn (Międzyrzecz life); Nayer folksblat (New people’s newspaper) in Lodz; Yidishes tageblat (Jewish daily newspaper) in New York; Baderekh (On the road) in Warsaw; and elsewhere.  Among his books: Hamagen mibet leḥem (The shield from Bethlehem), a children’s performance concerned with King Saul, following biblical themes (Warsaw, 1929), 32 pp.; and a biography of Rambam, entitled Maimonides (Warsaw, 1935), in Polish.  He had prepared for publication a book in Yiddish on Jewish thinkers in the Middle Ages, but it was lost in the Siedlce ghetto.  He and his family were murdered during the general liquidation of Siedlce Jews.

Sources: Biblyografishe yorbikher fun yivo (Bibliographic yearbooks from YIVO) (Warsaw, 1928); Y. Kaspi, in Sefer yizkor lekehilat shedlets (Remembrance volume for the community of Shedlets) (Tel Aviv and Buenos Aires, 1956), p. 269.