BENYOMEN SHIMIN

BENYOMEN SHIMIN (1880-summer 1942)

            He was a publisher, born in Shlov (Shklow), Byelorussia.  Until age fourteen, he attended religious elementary school and synagogue study chamber, later moving with his parents to Warsaw.  In 1907 he began his publishing work, initially bringing out political pamphlets. In 1908 he made at effort at a short “Universal Library” (Several volumes appeared in print, works by: Knut Hamsun, Guy de Maupassant, and Gershom Shofman).  The next year (1909), he began to publish “Shimins groyse velt-biblyotek” (Shimin’s great world library), which lasted for three years and constituted a major achievement in Yiddish publishing with sixty-six original and translated volumes, including works by: Z. Y. Anokhi, Yitskhok-Meyer Vaysenberg, Moyshe Stavski, Yoyne Rozenfeld, Yoyel Mastboym, Hillel Tsaytlin, Mortkhe-Zev Fayerberg, Zalmen Shneur, Avrom Reyzen, Yude Shteynberg, Yankev Shteynberg, Shloyme Gorelik, Shmuel Rozenfeld, Heinrich Heine, Max Nordau, Arthur Schnitzler, Leo Tolstoy, Rudyard Kipling, and others.  In 1911 he entered into a partnership with “Tsentral” (Central) Publishers.  In 1917 he founded a major newspaper in Kiev, Der telegraf (The telegraph), edited by Nokhum-Moyshe Sirkin.  In 1919 he returned to Warsaw and published Di yugnt-biblyotek (The young library) and Historishe yugnt-biblyotek (Historical youth library).  He died in the Otwock ghetto.

Source: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 4.

Berl Cohen