YISROEL-YANKL HERSHNBOYM

YISROEL-YANKL HERSHNBOYM (1908-December 1941)

            He was born in Lodz, Poland, into a Hassidic family.  He studied in religious elementary school, yeshiva, and with private tutors.  He graduated in 1923 from a conservatory.  For a time he worked as a rope maker, was active among Jewish anarchists, and later became an active leader in the left trade unions in Lodz.  Under a pen name, he published lyrical and revolutionary poetry in Literarishe tribune (Literary tribune) in Lodz, Zibn teg (Seven days) in Lemberg, and in illegal anarchist and Communist Yiddish periodicals in Poland.  During the Nazi occupation, he was an active fighter in the Lodz ghetto against the members of the “Jewish Council.”  At the time of the first deportation from the ghetto (December 1941), he was dispatched to Dachau and there murdered.

Sources: Information from his wife, Sarah, in New York; Kh. L. Fuks, in Fun noentn over (New York) 3 (1957), p. 270.