BENYOMEN NADEL

BENYOMEN NADEL (b. January 11, 1918)

            He was born in Petrograd, Russia.  In the 1930s he moved with his parents to Vilna.  He graduated from the Vilna Jewish senior high school in 1936 and entered the humanities faculty of Stefan Batory University, from which he graduated in 1939 with a master’s degree in philosophy.  One of his university papers concerned “Jews in Vilna Province during the Polish Uprising of 1863.”  In 1939 he moved to Soviet Russia and continued his studies at the Universities of Minsk and Sverdlovsk, from which he received his diploma cum laude.  He was a teacher in a middle school in Andijan in Uzbekistan (1942) and in Sverdlovsk (1943-1944), and he lectured on classical literature in the philosophy department at Leningrad University (1944-1945).  He was later an assistant in the research group in Greek epigraphy at the Leningrad division of the Soviet Academy of Sciences (1946-1947).  He was also professor of Latin at the Herzen Institute in Leningrad (1949-1957) and an instructor in ancient history at Danzig Teachers’ College (1958-1962).  From his over seventy (thus far) published research pieces, some two dozen are dedicated to Latin and general linguistics, and the rest are concerned primarily with the history, languages, and culture of the peoples and countries around the Black Sea.  He published in the more important scholarly venues in Soviet Russia, such as: Vestnik drevnei istorii (Journal of ancient history) in Moscow (1945-1948, 1957); Uchonye zapiski Instituta Gertsena (Scholarly notes of the Herzen Institute) in Leningrad (1954-1957); Uchonie zapiski instituta istorii i literatury (Scholarly notes of the Institute of History and Literature) (Czernowitz: Moldavian Branch of the Academy of Sciences, 1955); and Voprosy yazikoznaniya (Issues in linguistics) (1956).  In Polish scholarly publications: Archiv Orientalni (Oriental archive) (1960); Listy filologiczne (Philological letters) (1960); Archeologia (Archeology) (1961); Acta antiqua (1961); and the like.  In book form in Yiddish, Nadel published the following works: Yidn in mizrekh-eyrope fun di eltste tsaytn biz der mongolisher invazye (1240) (Jews in Eastern Europe from ancient times until the Mongol invasion of 1240) (Warsaw: Yidish bukh, 1960), 157 pp.; and Di eltste yidishe yishuvim in mizrekh-eyrope (The oldest Jewish settlements in Eastern Europe) (Warsaw: Yidish bukh, 1960), 132 pp.  A larger number of his treatments of the same topic and about the Kuzari were initially published in Folks-shtime (Voice of the people) in Warsaw (1958-1959), while other essays and book reviews appeared in: Yidishe shriftn (Yiddish writings) (Warsaw) 8-9 (1958), 7 (1959), 1 and 2 (1962); in Bleter far geshikhte (Pages for history) (Warsaw) 11 (1958); and in Biuletyn Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego (Bulletin of Institute of Jewish History) (Warsaw) 27-28 (1958), 32 (1960), 38 (1961).  He was a member of the Institute of Jewish History in Poland.

Sources: A. Glants-Leyeles, in Tog-morgn-zhurnal (New York) (November 6, 1960); Glants-Leyeles, in Folk un velt (New York) (January 1962), pp. 11-16; Sholem Shtern, in Morgn-frayhayt (New York) (August 13, 1961); Elye (Elias) Shulman, in Afn shvel (New York) (August-October 1961); Sh. Ber, in Yidishe shriftn (Warsaw) (October 1961); Sh. Belis, in Folks-shtime (Warsaw) (November 11, 1961); Belis, Portretn un problemen (Portraits and problems) (Warsaw, 1964).

Leyzen Ran