YISROEL LIKHTENSHTEYN

YISROEL LIKHTENSHTEYN (1904-September 1942)

            He was born in Radzin (Radzyn), Warsaw district, Poland.  He attended religious primary school, a Tarbut school, and later the Jewish teachers’ seminary in Vilna.  He was at first active in Hashomer Hatsair (The young guard) and later with the Labor Zionist party (left) as a member of the Warsaw committee.  In 1932 he became director of the Borokhov school in Prage (Praga), near Warsaw.  He published children’s stories in Grininke beymelekh (Little green trees) in Vilna (1926-1939).  From 1932 he was a member of the editorial board of Literarishe bleter (Literary leaves) in Warsaw, in which he published articles on literary and pedagogical topics.  He contributed as well to Arbeter-tsaytung (Workers’ newspaper) (1922-1939) and Fraye yugnt (Free youth) (1924-1932), among other serials.  Under the Nazi occupation he administered an underground children’s school in Radoshch, near Warsaw.  He was also a participant in Dr. Ringelbum’s underground ghetto archive.  He wrote stories and reportage pieces on ghetto life, several of which were published in the underground Labor Zionist press.  Among the unearthed items from the Ringelblum archive, there was also discovered Likhtenshteyn’s reportage work “Azoy es iz geven” (That’s how it was), a description of the Aktion on the eve of Tisha b’Av 1942, published in Bleter far geshikhte (Pages for history) (Warsaw), 2.1-4 (1949), pp. 3-8, together with his reportage work In mashekh fun eyn tog (Over the course of one day), a description of a ghetto street in Warsaw under the Nazis.  He was murdered together with his wife, the painter Gele Sekshteyn, during the second Aktion in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Sources: Yidishe shriftn, anthology (Warsaw, 1946); M. Nayshtat, Khurbn un oyfshtand fun di yidn in varshe (Holocaust and uprising of the Jews in Warsaw), vol. 2 (Tel Aviv, 1948), pp. 494-95; A. Ayzenbakh, in Bleter far geshikhte (Warsaw) 1 (1948), p. 57; Y. Pat, in Forverts (New York) (April 1, 1950); V. Kh. Ivan, in Bleter far geshikhte 6 (1951); B. Mark, Di umgekumene shrayber fun di getos un lagern (Murdered writers from the ghettos and camps) (Warsaw, 1954), pp. 56, 109, 130-31; L. Bayon, in Lerer-yizker-bukh (Remembrance volume for teachers) (New York, 1954), pp. 213-14; Rokhl Oyerbakh, Beḥutsot varsha, 1939-1943 (In the streets of Warsaw, 1939-1943), trans. Mordekhai Ḥalamish (Tel Aviv: Am oved, 1954), see index; Ide Ziglman, in Sefer radzin (Volume for Radzin) (Tel Aviv, 1957), pp. 326-27.

Khayim Leyb Fuks