NEKHEMYE TITELMAN

NEKHEMYE TITELMAN (1905-1943)

            He was born in Warsaw, Poland.  He studied in religious primary school, in a Polish public school, and in evening courses.  In the early 1920s, he became a business employee and was active in the left Labor Zionist party.  He was a founder and instructor at the Y. L. Perets sports society “Shtern” (Star).  He published sports notices in Arbeter-tsaytung (Workers’ newspaper) in Warsaw, later writing for Fraye yugnt (Free youth) in Warsaw and elsewhere.  At the time of the German invasion of Poland (September 1939), he escaped to Brisk (Brest), Lithuania.  Unable to live under the Soviets, in mid-1940 he returned by foot to Warsaw.  In the Warsaw Ghetto he was a contributor to the Labor Zionists’ workers’ kitchen, while at the same time an active leader of Dr. Ringelblum’s “Oyneg Shabes” project, for which he wrote the piece Der shmugel in geto (Smuggling in the ghetto).  It was there as well that he composed the story “Baym komunikat” (In communication), which described listening to illegal radio broadcasts in the ghetto in the evening hours after work.  He died in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Sources: Y. Turkov, Azoy is es geven (That’s how it was) (Buenos Aires, 1948), pp. 26, 27, 505; Dr. Emanuel Ringelblum, Notitsn fun varshever geto (Notices from the Warsaw Ghetto) (Warsaw, 1952), p. 135; B. Mark, Umgekumene shrayber fun di getos un lagern (Murdered writers from the ghettos and camps) (Warsaw, 1954), p. 132.

Khayim Leyb Fuks