SHIMEN SHPUND (SIMON SPUND)

SHIMEN SHPUND (SIMON SPUND) (April 21, 1894-February 1966)

            He was a multi-lingual writer, art critic, and poet, born in Horodenke (Horodenka), Galicia.  His father Khayim was a journalist and the publisher of Yiddish periodicals in Galicia.  He graduated from high school in Stanisle (Stanislaviv) in 1912.  In 1919 he was studying philosophy at the University of Lemberg.  From that point until late 1939, he lived in Lemberg.  He was arrested by the Soviet authorities and deported for five years to Siberia.  He spent 1946-1947 in Lodz, then London, a longer period of time in Paris, and his last years in Israel.  He wrote in Polish and German, published books in these languages, and edited important Polish Jewish periodicals, among them the widespread daily newspaper Chwila (Moment).  In his youth he began publishing articles, features, and poetry in his father’s weekly Stanislover nakhrikhten (Stanislaviv reports), later in other weeklies his father brought out, Stanislover gloke (Stanislaviv bell) and Yudishe folks-tsaytung (Jewish people’s newspaper) in Lemberg.  He contributed as well to: Lemberg’s Togblat (Daily newspaper); and Kiem (Existence), Unzer vort (Our word), Tsienistishe shtime (Zionist voice), Tsienistishe bleter (Zionist pages), and Almanakh (Almanac) (1955) in Paris—mostly art critical articles.  He wrote a play entitled Blinde libe (Blind love), performed frequently, the musical Bene khorin (Children of freedom), the libretto to Kh. Volftal’s Malka sheva (Queen of Sheba), and co-translated Offenbach’s Shene helena (Beautiful Helène [original: La belle Helène]).  In book form: Der letster fun di lamed-vav, lider (Last of the thirty-six, poems) (Paris, 1950), 52 pp.  He died in Gadara, Israel.

Source: Yeshurin archive, YIVO (New York).

Beyle Gottesman