DR. DANIEL-GDALYE PASMANIK

DR. DANIEL-GDALYE PASMANIK (January 22, 1869-July 15, 1930)

            He was born in Gadyatsh (Hadiach), Poltava Province.  He graduated in 1892 from medical school in Zurich and later lived in Bulgaria where he worked as a doctor.  In 1892 he began his literary activities in Bulgarian journals.  In 1896 he contributed to Professor Singer’s Vienna weekly Die Zeit (The times).  In 1899 he settled in Geneva and became a private instructor in the medical faculty and a Zionist leader.  He contributed to the Zionist organs in German and later in Russian.  In October 1905 he left for Russia, sat for the medical examinations in Moscow, and passed them.  One year he lived in Vilna and was a member of the central committee of the Zionist Organization in Russia.  He also wrote for Dos yudishe folk (The Jewish people)—he wrote very little Yiddish and others translated for him from Russian.  He also wrote under the pen name Daniel Ben Shmuel.  He was a minister in the Kadet government in the Crimea, and in 1919 he settled in Paris.  Over the years 1920-1922, he edited Obshcheye delo (Common cause) in Paris.  In Yiddish he wrote for: Tsayt (Times) in London; and Der yidisher kemfer (The Jewish fighter) in Philadelphia (1906).  In book form (translations into Yiddish by Y. Kaplanski): Di sotsyal demokrat iber der natsyonaler frage (The social democrat on the nationality question) (Odessa, 1906), 78 pp.; Di theorye un praktik funim poyle tsienizmus (The theory and practice of Labor Zionism) (Cracow, 1906), 110 pp.; Di fervirklikhung fun’m tsienizm (The realization of Zionism) (Odessa, 1908), 22 pp.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 2; Literarishe bleter (Warsaw) (July 18, 1930); Ruvn Brainin, in Tog (New York) (October 9, 1932); Yankev Glatshteyn, in Idisher kemfer (New York) (March 23, 1956).

Yankev Kahan