DOVID LEHRER

DOVID LEHRER (January 27, 1898-May 31, 1973)

            The brother of Leybush and Lipe Lehrer, he was born in Warsaw, Poland.  He attended a “cheder metukan” (improved religious elementary school), later (1910-1914) the Warsaw Commercial School.  In 1916 he joined the youth Bund “Tsukunft” (Future) in Warsaw, and there among other activities he also gave speeches on history and literature in the evening school of the organization.  For political reasons he left Poland in 1921, lived for a time in Berlin, and in 1922 he settled in Belgium.  He debuted in print with a correspondence piece from Belgium that appeared in Folks-tsaytung (People’s newspaper) in Warsaw (1924), and from that time he wrote correspondence pieces and articles for the Bundist Folks-tsaytung until the outbreak of WWII.  He especially excelled with his articles on political events in Western Europe.  He also published articles on literature, cultural issues, and reviews of Yiddish and French books in: Vokhnshrift far literatur (Weekly writing for literature) and Literarishe bleter (Literary leaves) (1928-1931) in Warsaw; Belgishe bleter (Belgian pages) in Antwerp; Parizer haynt (Paris today); and Shul-almanakh (School almanac) in Philadelphia (April 1935); among others.  From 1925 he was the Belgian correspondent for Tog (Day) in New York, and a contributor to the journals Di vokh (The week) and Idish (Yiddish) in New York, in which he published essays on Belgian writers.  He also published in the French-language Le Peuple (The people) in Brussels.  During WWII he left for France, and in January 1941 he, with help from the Jewish Labor Committee, moved to New York.  He wrote a series of article for Tsukunft (Future) on the condition of Jews in Belgium, France, and Holland under the Nazi occupation.  He also wrote on this for: Der poylisher yid (The Polish Jew), Byalistoker shtime (Voice of Bialystok), and B’nai Brith Journal.  He also placed work in Di prese (The press) in Buenos Aires, as well as in other newspapers and magazines.  From 1954 he was employed on a research project at YIVO and Yad Vashem, in particular (thanks to his mastery of French, Flemish, and Dutch) with research on the Holocaust in Western European Jewish communities.  He died in New York.

Sources: Biblyografishe yorbikher fun yivo (Bibliographic yearbooks from YIVO), vol. 1 (Warsaw, 1928); “Di prese tsu zeks un draysik yor” (Di prese at thirty-six years of age), in Yorbukh fun der yidisher kehile (Yearbook of the Jewish community) (Buenos Aires, 1954), p. 300; Y. Botoshanski, in Di prese (Buenos Aires) (December 31, 1957).

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