DOVID TROTSKI (DODE TROCKI)

DOVID TROTSKI (DODE TROCKI) (October 22, 1904-March 20, 1945)

            He was the brother of the Yiddish poet Shifre Verber.  He was born in Vilna, and in 1922 graduated from the Jewish senior high school, later for a time working as a teacher in the Jewish public school in Bresle (Breslau), Vilna district.  In 1924 he left home to study at the Brussels Polytechnicum, from which he graduated in 1928 as a chemical engineer.  From his youth he was a leader in the left Labor Zionists, and he later was to become a member of the central committee of the Labor Zionists in Belgium.  He was chairman of the culture committee at the council of Jewish organizations in Brussels, and a leader in the local YIVO committee, among other such positions.  He published in such periodicals of the left Labor Zionists as: Fraye yugnt (Free youth) in Warsaw; Arbeter tsaytung (Workers’ newspaper) and Arbeter vort (Workers’ word) in Paris; Unzer vort (Our word) and Belgishe bleter (Belgian pages] in Antwerp.  During WWII he edited the illegal Unzer vort and the French-language, underground monthly publication Le Flambeau (The torch).  In May 1940, during the Nazi invasion of Belgium, he escaped to France, and in the town of Revel, near Toulouse, he engaged in relief work for Jewish refugees.  He returned to Brussels in October 1940 and was among the main leaders in the underground fighting resistance to the Nazis.  He was arrested several times by the Gestapo, but he succeeded in escaping.  On August 3, 1944 he was arrested once again and deported to Germany.  For a time he worked in the death camps of Auschwitz, Mathausen, and Ebensee where he was tortured to death.

Sources: P. T., in Yivo-byuletin (Brussels) (April 1946); Unzer vort (Brussels) (March 18, 1949); Y. Tabakman, Mayne iberlebungen (Me experiences) (Tel Aviv, 1958), pp. 215-17; Dode trotski, tsu der tsvantsikster yortsayt nokh zayn martirer-toyt (Dode Trotski, on the twentieth anniversary of his martyr's death) (Tel Aviv, 1965), 87 pp., his articles and memoirs about him.

Khayim Leyb Fuks

[Additional information from: Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 287.]