NEKHEMYE FINKELSHTEYN

NEKHEMYE FINKELSHTEYN (b. 1890)

            He was born in Brisk (Brest), Poland.  He received a traditional Jewish education.  He moved to Warsaw, where with his brother Noyekh Finkelshteyn and Sh. Yatskon, he was one of the editor-publishers of Haynt (Today) and a close friend of Y. L. Perets and Yankev Dinezon.  He was a community and cultural leader.  He was a cofounder of the publisher Yehudiya, and one of the leaders of Hazemir (The nightingale), of the rescue committee, of TOZ (Towarzystwo Ochrony Zdrowia [Society for the protection of health]), and of a string of other organizations.  He contributed a major work to the jubilee volume for Haynt-yoyvl-bukh, 1908-1938 (Jubilee volume for Haynt, 1908-1938), pp. 8-15.  He was working on a piece entitled “Tsen yor mit peretsn” (Ten years with Perets).  He did a great deal for Yiddish literature and culture.  He died in the Warsaw Ghetto, during the Nazi occupation in the years of WWII.

Sources: Dos naye lebn (Lodz) (April 10, 1945); Yidishe shriftn (Lodz, 1946), p. 5; Z. Segalovitsh, Tlomatske 13, fun farbrente nekhtn (13 Tłomackie St., of zealous nights) (Buenos Aires: Central Association of Polish Jews in Argentina, 1946), p. 107; Yanos Turkov, Azoy iz es geven (That’s how it was) (Buenos Aires, 1948), pp. 69, 92, 93, 245, 246, 278; B. Kutsher, Geven amol varshe (As Warsaw once was) (Paris, 1955), p. 73; Dr. A. Mukdoni, In varshe un in lodzh (In Warsaw and in Lodz), vol. 1 (Buenos Aires, 1955).

Yankev Kahan