Sunday 13 January 2019

(YEKHIEL-) MOYSHE TSITRINOVITSH


(YEKHIEL-) MOYSHE TSITRINOVITSH (September 18, 1894-January 1965)
            He was born in Lodz, Poland, into a poor family.  He studied in religious elementary school, was a textile worker in his youth, and quickly became a labor leader and organizer of a trade union.  During WWI he ended up in Berlin where he was a student of Z. Rubashov (Shazar), joined the Labor Zionist movement, and founded the Y. L. Perets association.  The German police deported him to Poland.  There he became one of the leading members among the Labor Zionists.  He was arrested on several occasions.  At the time of the Nazi invasion of Poland, he made his way to Lithuania, Soviet Russia, and Japan until he was rescued in the United States with the assistance of the Jewish Labor Committee.  He soon became active there in “Adut haavoda, Poale Tsiyon” (Union of labor, Labor Zionists).  The last fourteen years of his life he was a member of trade unions in Philadelphia.  He began writing reportage pieces and political articles in 1918, contributing to: Proletarisher gedank (Proletarian idea) and Unzer veg (Our way).  He composed four anti-Hitler dramas: A lebn far a lebn (A life for a life), Bazol dem kheshbn, amalek (Pay the bill, Amalek), Du oykh prometeus? (You, too, Prometheus?), and D”r yankev vaserman (Dr. Jacob Vaserman)—none of them were published.  He died in Israel.

Sources: Kh. Brand, in Under veg (New York) (September 1954); obituary notices in the press (January 1965).
Leyb Vaserman


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