DOVID BEYGLMAN

DOVID BEYGLMAN (1887-1944)

Born in Lodz, he hailed from a family of musicians.  He studied in religious elementary school and in a Russian secular public school.  At quite a young age, he began composing, and he played in the orchestra of Zandberg’s Jewish Theater in Lodz; later, he would play in other Jewish theaters.  During the era in which Jewish variety shows in Poland became popular, he was a composer and often as well the writer of texts for the Ararat and Azazel Theaters.  He transcribed hundreds of Jewish folksongs and wrote the music for poems of Jewish writers.  Until the war began in 1939, he was living in Lodz; later, he was interned in the Lodz ghetto where he served as music director of a small Jewish theater.  He published articles and reviews concerning music in Nayer folksblat (New people’s newspaper) in Lodz.  He also wrote poetry with tunes in the ghetto.  Several of these were published in a volume entitled Lider fun di getos un lagern (Songs from the ghettos and camps), collected by Sh. Katsherginski, edited by H. Leivick (New York, 1948), 435 pp.  In August 1944, during the liquidation of the Lodz ghetto, he was deported to Auschwitz and murdered.

Source: Sh. Katsherginski, Lider fun di getos un lagern, pp. 41, 42, 43, 68.