VIKTOR FRISHMAN

VIKTOR FRISHMAN (1897-November 1936)

            He was born in Lodz, Poland.  He received a Jewish and a general education.  Until 1918 he was active in the unified Zionist Socialist party, later switching to the Communists.  He worked as a Yiddish teacher in Vilna and Warsaw.  He spent many years in Polish prisons, and in 1932 he was expelled to Russia.  There he assumed leading positions in political and Jewish cultural life, mainly in Minsk.  He began writing for the party press of the Zionist Socialists: Der veg (The way) and Unzer veg (Our way) in Warsaw.  From 1918 he was contributing to: Der kamf (The struggle) and other illegal publications in Warsaw; and Literarishe tribune (Literary tribune) and Der fraydenker (The freethinker) in Lodz.  He edited the weekly newspaper Der glok (The bell) in Warsaw (1921).  In the Soviet Union, he wrote for: the newspaper Oktyabr (October) in Minsk; Emes (Truth) and Der apikoyres (The heretic), among others, in Moscow; and co-edited the anthology Lenin kegn bund (Lenin against the Bund) (Minsk, 1935).  He was among the first arrested in connection with the show trials of Communists who had managed to make their way from Poland.  He committed suicide in a jail in Minsk.

Sources: Khayim Leyb Fuks, in Fun noentn over (New York) 3 (1957), see index; Unter der fon fun kp״p (Under the banner of the Polish Communist Party) (Warsaw, 1959), pp. 197, 198, 326, 364; Chone Shmeruk, comp., Pirsumim yehudiim babrit-hamoatsot, 1917-1961 (Jewish publications in the Soviet Union, 1917-1961) (Jerusalem, 1961), see index.

Khayim Leyb Fuks