MEYLEKH FOGEL

MEYLEKH FOGEL (1898-September 17, 1939)

            He was born in Bzhezhin (Brzeziny), near Lodz, Poland.  Until age twelve he attended religious primary school, later working in tailoring.  He was active in party work for the left Labor Zionists from 1921, with interruptions, while living in Warsaw.  He was a poet of the people and a storyteller.  A lover of Yiddish literature, from his meagre earnings he made his way through the writings of the Lodz poetry group.  From 1923 he was publishing poems, sketches, and “types of the people” in: Lodzer tageblat (Lodz daily newspaper), Folksblat (People’s newspaper), Feld (Field), Vegn (Pathways), and Shevln (Thresholds), among others, in Lodz; and Keneder odler (Canadian eagle) in Montreal; among others.  Over the years 1925-1938, he brought out an assortment of local Brzeziny poems, twenty-four pages each—one of them “A shnayder-lid” (A tailor’s poem) was included in the Bzhezhin yizker-bukh (Brzeziny remembrance volume) (New York, 1961).  He had prepared for publication a book of folktales and poetry which should have appeared in 1939, but due to the war never was published.  He was killed during the German bombardment of Brzeziny.

Sources: Biblyografishe yorbikher fun yivo (Bibliographic yearbooks from YIVO) (Warsaw, 1928), see index; Khayim Leyb Fuks, in Fun noentn over (New York) 3 (1957), p. 234; Bzhezhin yizker-bukh (Brzeziny remembrance volume) (New York, 1961), pp. 152-53.

Khayim Leyb Fuks