KHAYIM-YITSKHOK MALIK

KHAYIM-YITSKHOK MALIK (1888-May 1944)

            He was born in Sighet-Marmației, Hungary, into a rabbinical family.  He studied in religious elementary schools and yeshivas.  In 1916 he arrived in Biskad, worked in business for a time, and then (1921-1942) was the headmaster of the Biskader Rebbe’s yeshiva.  He published articles and translations of ethical religious texts in the Orthodox Jewish press in Hungary.  He was the author of religious works (in Hebrew and Yiddish): Mekhalkel ḥayim (Giver of life), religious laws, with Yiddish translation (Satu Mare, 1934), 58 pp.; Uvaḥarta baḥayim (And therefore choose life) (Satu Mare, 1935), 48 pp.; Sefer naḥalat yaakov (The inheritance of Jacob), “included in this volume are truly wonderful items drawn from divine religious works which will come to be when the Messiah arrives” (Satu Mare, 1935), 72 pp.; Sefer naḥalat azriel (The inheritance of Azriel), “so that a man should know how to behave before God, blessed be He, and before people” (Satu Mare, 1938), 54 pp. + 2 pp.  He lived in Biskad until 1942, and later in various German concentration camps; at the end in the Sighet camp where the Nazis tortured him horrifically, and from there he was deported to Auschwitz and murdered.

Sources: Y. Y. Cohen, in Kriyat sefer (Jerusalem) (Kislev [= December] 1959); Cohen, in Yivo-bleter (New York) (1962), pp. 274, 275; Bet eked sefarim; Hungarian section of the World Jewish Congress in Budapest, Report 11-12; information from the son of the Biskader Rebbe, Rabbi Nokhum-Tsvi Fish, in New York.

Khayim Leyb Fuks