MEYER TSHUDNER (MEIR CZUDNER)

MEYER TSHUDNER (MEIR CZUDNER) (1888-January 1943)

            He was born in Lutsk, Volhynia.  He was a Hebrew teacher.  Until 1929 he lived in Vilna, thereafter moving to Warsaw.  There he founded the Hebrew-language journal Gelim (Mantle) (1929-1931).  He published poetry, stories, and articles in: Literarishe bleter (Literary leaves), Velt-shpigl (World mirror), Haynt (Today), Der khoydesh (The monthly), Moment (Moment), Hatsfira (The siren), and Hayom (Today)—all in Warsaw; Frimorgn (Morning) in Riga (1933); and in the Volhynia Yiddish press.  He authored the volume of poetry: Renanim (Songs) (Warsaw, 1923), 78 pp.  From Russian he translated into Yiddish N. A. Rubanik’s Di nisyoynes fun a yidishn doktor (The temptations of a Jewish doctor) and from English into Hebrew Y. Zangwill’s Di kinder fun geto (Children of the Ghetto).  Over the years 1935-1939, he and E. Karlebakh co-edited the Hebrew weekly newspaper Baderekh (On the road) in Warsaw.  He was confined in the Warsaw Ghetto.  He was killed during the January Aktion of 1943.  In Udim (Firebrands) in Jerusalem (1960), some of his poems (pp. 122-29) and a story (pp. 294-98) were republished.

Sources: Sh. Bernholts, in Poylishe yid (New York) (April 1944); Dr. Hillel Zaydman, Togbukh fun varshever geto (Diary from the Warsaw Ghetto) (Buenos Aires, 1947), pp. 80, 146, 147, 171, 198; Y. Turkov, Azoy is es geven (That’s how it was) (Buenos Aires, 1948), pp. 246, 433; B. Mark, Umgekumene shrayber fun di getos un lagern (Murdered writers from the ghettos and camps) (Warsaw, 1954), pp. 18, 67; B. Kutsher, Geven amol varshe (As Warsaw once was) (Paris, 1955), see index.

Khayim Leyb Fuks