MENDL ZAKS

MENDL ZAKS (b. 1897)

            He was born in Konin, Kalish (Kalisz) district, Poland, into a family of craftsmen.  In his youth he moved to Kalish.  He studied in a religious elementary school and later graduated from a Polish high school and studied philosophy at Warsaw University.  During WWI he played a leading role with the left Labor Zionists in Warsaw.  In 1923 he moved to Argentina and until 1956 was politically active among the Jewish Communists there.  He began writing with a cycle of travel descriptions in Di prese (The press) in Buenos Aires (1924), and from that point on he wrote feature pieces, short stories, articles, essays, as well as translations from German, Polish, and Spanish in: Di prese, Di vokh (The week), Haynt (Today), Der veg (The way), Ikuf (IKUF [Jewish Cultural Association]), Der shpigl (The mirror), Folksshtime (Voice of the people), Tribune (Tribune), Landmanshaftn (Native place associations), Royter shtern (Red star), In gang (In progress), and in a Spanish-language student journal in which he published essays on modern Yiddish literature.  In Pinkes varshe (Records of Warsaw) (Buenos Aires, 1955), he published several Jewish folksongs from Warsaw which he collected himself and a major essay entitled “Der kostyushko-oyfshtand un di yidishe bateylikung in kamf kegn der tseteylung fun poyln” (The Kościuszko uprising and the Jewish participation in the struggle against the partition of Poland) (pp. 97-120).  He was the editor of a Spanish-language Jewish periodical of home tailors and of a Polish weekly about immigration to Argentina.  In book form: Y. l. perets (Y. L. Perets) (Buenos Aires, 1945), 48 pp., a monograph for which he received the first prize in the YIVO competition in Argentina.  In his later years, he withdrew from community work and devoted himself solely to literature.

            His older brother AVROM, a former yeshiva student and later a friend of Y. L. Perets, also published novellas in Fraynd (Friend) under the pseudonym “Avrom Ben-Khayim.”  He died in Paris in 1946.

Sources: P. Kats, Geklibene shriftn (Selected works), vol. 7 (Yiddish literature in Argentina) (Buenos Aires, 1947); Antologye fun der yidisher literatur in argentine (Anthology of Yiddish literature in Argentina) (Buenos Aires, 1944); Pinkes varshe (Records of Warsaw) (Buenos Aires, 1955), pp. 1339-42; Y. Botoshanshaki, in Di prese (Buenos Aires) (December 31, 1957).

Khayim Leyb Fuks