YOYSEF (JOSEPH) BASKIN (1880-June 26, 1952)
Born in Byale, Minsk district, the younger son of a poor
elementary school teacher. Together with
his older brother, Avrom, he was raised by his father’s second wife after the
death of his [biological] mother. Until
age twelve, he studied in religious elementary schools in Byale, Ilye, Hute,
and Dolhinov (Daŭhinava). At
the age of seven or eight, he was already “eating days” (boarding with
different families each day of the week), working in a matzo bakery, and
sleeping on hard benches. At age twelve,
while a yeshiva student, he hired himself out as an elementary school teacher
for two young boys. He later went to
Vilna and studied there in R. Yoyel’s yeshiva, later elsewhere in the
city. He worked as a kind of assistant
synagogue sexton in the cobblers’ synagogue.
At the same time, he studied Russian and secular subjects. Under the influence of his older brother, who
had left the yeshiva to become a laborer, he became disposed to support the
socialists at the age of fifteen. At
seventeen, he became a member of the Bund, shortly after that party came into
existence in 1897. One year later, he
departed for Switzerland where Pavel Akselrod and Georgi Plekhanov helped
support him so that he would be able to prepare to enter university. From 1900 he was studying in the University
of Lausanne, later in the University of Nancy (France), from which in 1905 he
received an engineering diploma. During
his student years, he was a member of the Bundist student organization. At the start of 1901, he was one of two
delegates from the Lausanne Bundist student group to the conference of Bundist
student associations in European universities.
Upon graduation, he left and returned to Russia. He lived through the 1905-1906 revolution and
its suppression in Vilna. He was held
under arrest for twelve days. He was the
nominal owner and the actual proofreader for a publisher, set up with money
from the Bund. At the end of 1907, when
the Bundist press was suppressed, he emigrated to the United States. He worked in the Westinghouse factory in
Pittsburgh, and he became involved in the local Jewish labor movement and
separately from this—in the Workmen’s Circle.
Due to a work-related accident, he was compelled to stop working. He then relocated to New York where he
remained for the rest of his life, initially (1914-1917) as assistant to the
general secretary of the Workmen’s Circle and from 1917 until the day of his
death as the general secretary. He was
also active in the managing organs of the Jewish workers’ committee, ORT
(Association for the Promotion of Skilled Trades), People’s Relief (after WWI),
the Forverts Association, the Jewish socialist union, and more. He wrote for the Forverts (Forward), Fraynd
(Friend), and Veker (Alarm), as well as in the Bundist press in Poland
and the United States. From 1923 he
served as editor of Fraynd, organ of the Workmen’s Circle, and he had a
regular column there entitled “Shtiklekh un breklekh” (Bits and pieces). For his seventieth birthday, he composed an
autobiography, compiled as a “Baskin-jubilee volume and published by the
Workmen’s Circle in 1951.
Sources:
Y. Sh. Herts, 50 yor arbeter-ring (Fifty years of the Workmen’s Circle)
(New York, 1950); Y. Baskin, Zu zayn 70-yorikn yubilei (On his 70th
birthday), an anthology (New York, 1951); Der fraynd (New York)
(July-August, 1952); Tsviyon, in Forverts (May 26, 1951); Nokhum Yud,
“Yoysef baskin” (Joseph Baskin), a poem in Der fraynd (December 1951);
L. Faynberg, in Der tog (September 8, 1951); Kh. Sh. Kazdan, in Unzer
tsayt (New York) (January 1952); Dzhei Greison, in Forverts (June
27, 1952); N. Khanin, in Forverts (January 1, June 27, June 28, June 30,
July 1, 1952).
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