HILEL
ZAYDMAN (HILLEL SEIDMAN) (November 27, 1915-August 28, 1995)
He was born in Skalati (Skalat),
eastern Galicia. He received a stringently
religious education, later studying at Warsaw University, and in 1939 he
received his doctor of philosophy degree.
He contributed to the Orthodox daily newspaper Dos yudishe togblat (The Jewish daily newspaper), 1930-1939, and to
Moment (Moment), 1938-1939. In the 1930s he was secretary of Kolo, the
Jewish club of deputies in the Polish Sejm.
He was also secretary at the time for Agudat Yisrael in Poland and a
leader of Agudah youth. From 1937 he
worked in the archive of the Warsaw Jewish community. In 1939 he was also a member of the Warsaw
city council. He co-edited (1939) Dr.
Feldshuh’s Idishe gezelshaftlikher
leksikon (Jewish communal handbook) in Warsaw and Głos gminy żydowskiej (Voice of the
Jewish community), organ of the Warsaw community. With the outbreak of WWII, he was confined in
the Warsaw Ghetto, continued his work for the Jewish community, and on several
occasions was narrowly saved from “deportations.” He procured papers as a citizen of Paraguay
(South America), was held for a certain amount of time in the Pawiak prison,
but was then sent with a transport of American and English citizens to prison
in Vittel, France, from which in September 1944 he was liberated by the
American army. In 1946 he came to the
United States and settled in New York.
From 1946 he was a contributor to Tog
(Day) and Tog-morgn-zhurnal
(Day-morning journal), in which he wrote articles on various topics and for the
Friday issue on the “weekly portion of Torah and Prophets.” He was active in Agudat Yisrael and in Poale
Agudat Yisrael (Workers for [ultra-Orthodox] Agudat Yisrael) in America. From 1956 he was editor of the organ of
religious Jewry in America, Di idishe
vokh (The Jewish week), in which he ran a column entitled “Di vokh” (The
week). He also published articles in: Haboker (This morning) in Tel Aviv; Hamodia (The herald) in Jerusalem; Hadoar (The mail) in New York; and
others. In book form, he published in
Polish: Szlakiem nauki talmudycznej
(On the trail of Talmudic studies) (Warsaw, 1934), 81 pp.; Prawda o uboju rytualnym (The truth about Jewish ritual slaughter)
(Warsaw, 1936), 87 pp.; and monographs on oaths according to Jewish law (1937),
the religious renaissance of Jewish women (1937), the religious school
curriculum in the context of Polish legislation (1937), Jewish community taxes
in Warsaw (1938), and the abolition of the Jewish community in Warsaw in 1820-1822
(1939). In Yiddish, he wrote: Dos yidishe religyeze shulvezn (Jewish
religious school curricula) (Warsaw, 1938); Geshikhte
fun yidn in erets-yisorel (History of the Jews in the land of Israel) (Lemberg:
N. Rayf, 1939); A kholem vegn a yidishe
melukhe (A dream of a Jewish state) (Warsaw: Goldberg, 1939). While in the Warsaw Ghetto, Seidman kept a
diary from July 12, 1942 until the uprising at the end of April 1943, later
published as: Tog-bukh fun varshever geto
(Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto) (Buenos Aires, 1947), 321 pp. It also appeared in Hebrew as Yoman geto varsha (Diary of the Warsaw
Ghetto) (Tel Aviv, 1945/1946; New York, 1957), with a preface by Yosef Heftman.[1] He later published: Di sedre fun der vokh (The weekly portion of Pentateuch) (New York:
Bel Harbor Publ., 1965); and many more books.
Sources:
Yonas Turkov, Azoy iz es geven (That’s how it was)
(Buenos Aires, 1948), pp. 56, 92, 246; Who’s
Who in World Jewry (New York, 1955).
Zaynvl Diamant
[Additional
information from: Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon
fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New
York, 1986), col. 261.]
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