ARN TVERSKI (AARON TWERSKY)

ARN TVERSKI (AARON TWERSKY) (b. 1898)

            Brother of the poet Avrom Tverski, he was born in Loyev (Loyew), Byelorussia.  He studied in yeshivas and in the Odessa polytechnic, thereafter at the commercial academy in Vienna.  He graduated as a chemical engineer from Prague University.  In 1906 he survived the pogrom in Uman.  He was active among Tseire-Tsiyon (Young Zionists) and in the pioneer movement in Ukraine.  When the Bolsheviks began to persecute the Zionists, he illegally escaped to Bessarabia, later making his way to Romania.  He was secretary general of the rescue committee for homeless Jews in Romania.  Until the Nazi occupation, he lived in Paris where he was a member of the technical council of the Central Committee of European ORT (Association for the Promotion of Skilled Trades) and of the Union of Jewish Architects and Engineers in France.  He took part in the underground movement against the Nazis, was later arrested, and survived several Nazi death camps.  In 1945 he was liberated by the American army from Dachau.  From 1946 he was living in the United States.  He began writing for the weekly newspaper Erd un arbet (Land and labor) in Kishinev (1920).  He was the author of the volume Ikh bin der korbn un der eydes (I am victim and witness), with “A por verter” (A few words) by H. Leivick, a preface by the author, and a biographical sketch by L. Slutski (New York, 1947), 341 pp.—published earlier in Tog (Day) in New York.  This book described the Germans’ viciousness over the years 1940-1945.  “The pages of A. Tverski—and A. Tverski alone—are radiation from a mission,” wrote H. Leivick.  He was last living in New York.

Sources: Yankev Glatshteyn, in Idisher kemfer (New York) (January 14, 1949); Avrom Reyzen, in Di feder (New York) (1949), p. 203; Y. Freylikh, in Unzer veg (New York) (February 15, 1949).

Khayim Leyb Fuks