B. ALMUNI (ALMONI)

B. ALMUNI (ALMONI) (1892-1953)

Pseudonym of Ben-Tsien Makhtey, he was born in the Vilna region.  In the 1920s he was a teacher in the schools of the “school organization for Vilna province.”  In the early 1930s, he moved to South Africa and settled in Johannesburg where he quickly became the editor-publisher of the Afrikaner yidisher tsaytung (African Jewish newspaper), a weekly.  He later published an illustrated Jewish Almanakh (Almanac) in English.  He wrote articles and travelogues under the pseudonym “Dr. B. Almuni” for Yiddish-language newspapers in Vilna as well as in New York.  He died following an operation in New York.