KAROL AYNOYGLER (EINAUGLER)

KAROL AYNOYGLER (EINAUGLER) (October 28, 1883-March 22, 1952)

Cofounder and popular leader of the Jewish Social-Democratic Party in Galicia (Y. Yidishe sotsial-demokratishe partey; P. Żydowska Partia Socjal-Demokratyczna, [ŻPS]).

Born in Lemberg (Lvov) into a family of poor shopkeepers in second-hand goods.  He supported himself from earliest youth.  He studied and graduated in law from Lemberg University.  As a senior high school student, he became involved with the socialist movement in Galicia and worked among Jewish laborers.  He belonged to a group that decided to split off from the Polish Social Democratic Party (Polska Partia Socjalno-Demokratyczna [PPSD]) and found its own Jewish Party (May 1905).  He was among the most visible leaders in the new party, especially in eastern Galicia.  He belonged for many years to the central committee of the party, and during that time he was among the most active contributors to the weekly party organ, Sotsial-demokrat (Social democrat).  At the seventh congress of the Bund (August 1906 in Lemberg), he was one of three delegates from ŻPS, and in 1918 he participated in a solemn deed of uniting with the Polish Bund.  Between the two world wars, he remained as always active in the Bund and from time to time took part in the Bundist press.  Representing the Bund in the Lemberg Jewish community and in the city council, he contributed a work concerning the beginning of the Jewish socialist press in Galicia in 1894to volume 3 of Historishe shriftn fun yivo (Historical writings from YIVO) (1939).  He was arrested at the end of September 1939, shortly after the invasion of the Soviet Army into Lemberg as an “enemy of the people.”  He spent a period of time in Soviet jails and camps.  During the Sikorsky-Stalin agreement, he was freed.  He was one of roughly twenty Polish and Jewish political personalities whom the Sikorsky government in London nominated in the summer of 1941 as its representatives to distribute assistance among the numerous Polish citizens, both Polish and Jewish, in Russia.  He was then arrested again after this, as Stalin broke the agreement with the Polish government in exile in London, underwent a trial ostensibly for illegal Bundist activity on Soviet Russian territory, and was sentenced to four years in prison, but in 1948 he was freed from prison and sent back to Poland.  En route, he became paralyzed and remained an invalid.  In December 1949 he came to New York where he lived with his two children who were miraculously rescued (their mother was living in Lemberg so as not to fall into the clutches of the Nazi murderers).  Later he lived with his married daughter in Evansville, Indiana.  There in 1952 he passed away suddenly.  His remains were cremated, and the urn of ashes was brought to New York.

Sources: Dr. Y. Bros, “Tsu der geshikhte fun der yysd”ap in Galitsye” (Toward the history of the Jewish Social-Democratic Party in Galicia), Royter pinkes 2 (Warsaw, 1924); John Mill, Pyonern un boyer (Pioneers and builders), vol. 2 (New York, 1949); Dr. L. Fayner, “Di bundishe prese in kroke fun 1905 biz 1930” (The Bundist press in Krakow between 1905 and 1930), Historisher zamlbukh (Historical collection) (Warsaw, 1948); Undzer tsayt (February 1941), New York, funeral announcement; Undzer tsayt (April-May 1941), funeral announcement; Dr. Y. Kisman, Undzer tsayt (April-May 1952).