Sunday 1 October 2017

SHMUEL MAYZLISH

SHMUEL MAYZLISH (ca. 1895-May 30, 1948)
            He came from Zhitomir, Ukraine.  He received a traditional Jewish education together with a secular one.  He later studied at Kiev University.  In the early 1920s he moved to Berlin, where he prepared a series of economics-statistical works for YIVO in Vilna.  For a time he worked as a correspondent for Morgn-zhurnal (Morning journal) in New York.  Amid his scholarly work, he placed in a YIVO publication such items as: “Di yidn in terkay” (The Jews of Turkey) with tables and numbers, Yivo-bleter (Pages from YIVO) (Vilna) 1.5 (May 1931), pp. 474-75; “Mos un vog fun di shul-kinder in poyln” (Height and weight of school children in Poland), Yivo-bleter 2.4-5, pp. 444-48; “Di hoypt-fondn far erets yisroel” (The main funds for the land of Israel), Ekonomishe shriftn (Economic writings) (Vilna) 2 (1932), pp. 158-73; “Di voyn-farheltenishn in di groyse shtet un yidn” (Residential ratios in large cities and Jews), Yivo-bleter 3.1 (1932), pp. 48-52; “Di shul-kinder in rige loyt natsye un limudim-shprakh” (School children in Riga according to nationality and language of instruction), Yivo-bleter 3.4-5, pp. 412-20; “Yidn in der shvayts” (Jews in Switzerland), Yivo-bleter 4.1 (1932), pp. 79-80; and “Arbetsloze in rige” (Unemployment in Riga), Yivo-bleter 4.2 (1932), pp. 182-84; among others.  After Hitler’s rise to power in Germany (1933), he sent to foreign newspapers correspondence pieces on the tortures suffered by Jews under Nazi rule and was accordingly arrested and tortured by the Gestapo, but he was successful in fleeing Germany.  He then arrived in the land of Israel, was a member of the Histadruth, and worked as a bureaucrat in Jerusalem.  He died in Jerusalem.

Sources: Dr. A. Mukdoni, in Morgn-zhurnal (New York) (December 2, 1932); Y. Kalinov, in Davar (Tel Aviv) (May 20, 1949); Yivo-biblyografye 1925-1941 (YIVO bibliography, 1925-1941) (New York: YIVO, 1943); archive of E. Tsherikover, YIVO; information from Mrs. Tsherikover in New York.
Zaynvl Diamant


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