SHOLEM TREYSTMAN

SHOLEM TREYSTMAN (b. 1900)

            He was born in Zhelekhov (Zelechow), Poland.  His father was rabbi in Zhelekhov, later in Lodz.  Sholem graduated from senior high school and rabbinical seminary and received ordination into the rabbinate.  For a time, he was head rabbi in Finland.  He was a cofounder of the religious association Yeshurun which was politically close to the Revisionists.  At the time of Hitler’s invasion of Poland (September 1939), he escaped to Bialystok, and there in 1940 he was arrested and deported to a Soviet labor camp in the Arkhangelsk region.  With the repatriation of Polish citizens in Soviet Russia, he returned to Poland, where he was a member of head rabbinate in the country.  From 1952 he was living in the state of Israel.  He debuted in print with lyrical poetry in Lodzer taheblat (Lodz daily newspaper) in 1916, and thereafter he contributed to: Der nayer folksblat (The new people’s newspaper), Heftn far literatur (Notebooks for literature), Yugend (Youth), Literatur (Literature), Der idisher zhurnalist (The Jewish journalist), Gezangen (Songs), and Di yetstige tsayt (Contemporary times)—all in Lodz; Hatsfira (The siren), Baderekh (On the road), and Unzer veg (Our path)—in Warsaw; and the like.  From 1953 he also wrote for Letste nayes (Latest news) in Tel Aviv, in which he published every Friday a column entitled: “Fun unzer altn kval” (From our old source).  From time to time he placed pieces in other newspapers in Israel.  He was last living in Tel Aviv, a member of the local rabbinate.

Sources: Dr. Hillel Zaydman, Togbukh fun varshever geto (Diary from the Warsaw Ghetto) (Buenos Aires, 1947), pp. 133-35; Khayim Leyb Fuks, in Fun noentn over (New York) 3 (1957), pp. 200, 221, 261; Meylekh Ravitsh, Mayn leksikon (My lexicon), vol. 3 (Montreal, 1958), p. 477).

Khayim Leyb Fuks