Sunday, 11 June 2017

MENDL LEVINSKI

MENDL LEVINSKI (ca. 1900-ca. 1944)
            His family came from Poland.  Between the two world wars, he lived in Paris where he worked as a presser in a tailor’s shop.  He was a friend of and collector for YIVO in Vilna and was engaged in research on the influence of French on the Yiddish language of Jewish immigrants in France.  He contributed such work as the following: “Frantseyzishe verter inem parizer yidish” (French words in Parisian Yiddish), in Yidn in frankraykh, shtudyes un materyaln (Jews in France, studies and materials), ed. A. Tsherikover, vol. 2 (New York: YIVO, 1942), pp. 193-204.  During WWII and the German occupation, he was in Paris.  In 1943 he was interned in a concentration camp in the lower Pyrenees.  He was sent from there with the transports of February-March 1943 to Drancy and from there to Germany, where he was murdered.

Sources: Yivo-biblyografye 1925-1941 (YIVO bibliography, 1925-1941) (New York: YIVO, 1943); written testimony from B. Ezrovitsh (Bronek) in Paris, found in the YIVO archives; oral information from Mrs. Tsherikover and Z. Shaykovski in New York.
Zaynvl Diamant


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