LIBE KANEL

LIBE KANEL (April 17, 1889-1943)

            She was born in Bialystok.  Over the years 1917-1919, she studied in an elite school in Geneva, from which she received a degree in social science and pedagogy.  In 1925 she returned to Bialystok.  Her entire life was connected to the secular Jewish school.  She aspired to adapt the Jewish school to the specific distinctiveness of Jewish children.  She assembled materials for them, ran questionnaires in Jewish public schools in bigger cities (Warsaw, Lodz, Pinsk, and the like), and prepared a lengthy study entitled “Forshungen iber di psikhishe aygnartikeytn fun yidishn kind” (Research on the psychological distinctive features of the Jewish child).  She wrote a great deal on this issue for Naye shul (New school) and several articles in Yivo-bleter (Pages from YIVO) (1931, 1939); in Bialystok in Dos naye lebn (The new life).  She died in the Bialystok ghetto.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 3; Byalistoker leksikon (Bialystok handbook) (Bialystok, 1935); Lerer yizker-bukh (Remembrance volume for teachers) (New York, 1954), pp. 365-66.

Yekhezkl Lifshits