NINA TENENBOYM-BEKER (TENNENBAUM-BACKER)

NINA TENENBOYM-BEKER (TENNENBAUM-BACKER) (b. February 27, 1914)

            She was born in Warsaw.  She received a traditional education.  After graduating from middle school, she studied history and sociology at Warsaw University and received a Master’s degree.  She was in a Siberian camp during WWII.  She returned to Warsaw in 1946, and in 1948 she moved to Argentina; from 1972 she was living in Israel.  She began publishing in 1936 in Polish Jewish newspapers; she later wrote articles about literature and the Holocaust in: Di prese (The press), Idishe tsaytung (Jewish newspaper), and Davke (Necessarily) in Buenos Aires; Letste nayes (Latest news) and Yidishe tsaytung (Jewish newspaper) in Tel Aviv; Gesher (Bridge) in Jerusalem; and elsewhere.  Among her books: Mortkhe tenenboym-tamarof, der held fun di getos (Mortkhe Tenenboym-Tamarof, the hero of the ghettos) (Tel Aviv: Nay lebn, 1978), two vols.—in Hebrew translation, Gibor hagetaot, mordekhai tenenboim-tamarof (Tel Aviv, 1980), 424 pp. (an earlier Hebrew edition appeared in Jerusalem, 1974); Yalde hashoa (Children of the Holocaust) (Tel Aviv, 1983/1984), 167 pp., an adaptation of eleven diaries and memoirs of children and youth, written during or shortly after the Holocaust, translated into Hebrew by Tsvi Yashiv.  In Argentina she published a book under the pseudonym Bas-Khayim.

Sources: D. Loin, in Gesher (Jerusalem) (August 1974); A. Baraban, in Yidishe tsaytung (Tel Aviv) (August 16, 1974); A. Tartakover, in Davar (Tel Aviv) (September 11, 1974); M. Goldshteyn, in Har haḥinukh (Tel Aviv) (October 17, 1974); Sh. Yadles (Sh. Kants), in Letste nayes (Tel Aviv) (August 15, 1975); Y. Shmulevitsh, in Forverts (New York) (September 8, 1978).

Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), cols. 284-85.