KHANE SMUSHKOVITSH

KHANE SMUSHKOVITSH (1912-194?)

            (Other sources give her surname as Smushkevitsh.)  She was born in Disna, Vilna district.  Over the years 1919-1926, she studied in the Disna Jewish school, and 1927-1931 in the Polish state high school in Disna.  She studied history and pedagogy (1931-1936) at Vilna University and prepared a research work for the history seminar at the university.  Her M. A. work was on the topic of the chimney tax at the time of St. August in Lithuania; she had a strong interest in Jewish economic history and, among other things, prepared a piece of research on the membership of interest-free loan society at the Disna people’s bank over the years 1924-1930.  She was also a researcher attached to YIVO in Vilna.  Because of the materials held in the Vilna state archives, she researched the prosperity of Jewish industry and the differentiation of the Jewish population of Vilna in the second half of the nineteenth century after the abolition of serfdom.  For the third round of YIVO research (1937-1938), she prepared “Di ekonomishe antviklung fun vilne in der tsveyter helft fun 19tn yorhundert” (The economic development of Vilna in the second half of the nineteenth century) and for the fourth round (1938-1939) “Vilner yidishe tsekhn biz 1850” (Vilna’s Jewish guilds until 1850).  She published several articles in Vilner tog (Vilna day), among them a piece on the performance of the opera Aida in Yiddish in Vilna (October 30, 1938).  She is believed to have died in the Gluboke ghetto.

Sources: Leyzer Ran, 25 yor yung vilne (Twenty-five years of Young Vilna) (New York, 1955).

Leyzer Ran