MORTKHE MAZOVER

MORTKHE MAZOVER (December 8, 1874-May 2, 1952)

            He was born in Grodno, Russian Poland, the son of a miller.  After his father’s death, he settled in Vilna where he initially joined the revolutionary movement, was a member of the “Zhargon [= Yiddish] Committee” (1895), and later (1899) was a member of the illegal committee of the Bund in Vilna (under the party pseudonym “Mark the White”); for a time he belonged to the Bundist student group in Berlin.  He was an official of the central committee of the Bund, spent time in Tsarist prisons, and was exiled to Siberia, from whence he escaped abroad in 1902, and there he was active in the foreign committee of the Bund.  He published articles in the illegal Vilna Bundist organ, Klasn-kamf (Class struggle) and was for a time co-editor of the newspaper; he also composed a series of party appeals, among them a call concerning the pogrom in Homel (Gomel) in September 1903, and appeals from the Lodz committee of the Bund.  He was later the manager of the Bundist daily press in Vilna (1905-1907).  From the time of WWI he was living in England, and he died in London.

Source: Folks-tsaytung (Vilna) (August 7, 1906); Doyres bundistn (Generations of Bundists), vol. 1 (New York, 1956), p. 370.

Yankev Kahan