YISROEL BIBER

YISROEL BIBER (1898-1941)

Born in Kolomaye, Galicia, he attended and graduated from the secular high school there.  He went on to study in Vienna.  In 1924 he moved to Vilna and became a teacher of natural science and geography there in the Jewish teachers’ institute; he was later director of the institute.  The Polish regime later shut down the institute, and he thus went on to teach the same subjects at the secondary school of the central education committee.  He created a place for natural science at the Medem Sanatorium in Międzeszyn.  He played an active role in Jewish cultural work in Vilna until the German invasion in 1941.  He led evening courses for workers at the Vilna educational society.  In the first months of the Vilna ghetto, he was taken out in the middle of the night and disappeared forever.  Among his books: Zoologye (Zoology), part 1, invertebrates (Vilna, 1934), 125 pp.; Anotomye, fizyologye un higyene fun mentsh (Anatomy, human physiology and hygiene) (Vilna, 1935), 124 pp.; Friling (Spring), a booklet for the fifth class in public school (Warsaw, 1936), 86 pp.; Zoologye, part 2, vertebrates (Vilna, 1937), 95 pp.; Vinter in vald (Winter in the woods) (Warsaw, 1937), 62 pp.; Friling in vald (Spring in the woods) (Warsaw, 1937), 46 pp.; Ilustrirter katolog fun naturvisnshaftlekhn muzey (Illustrated catalogue of the natural science museum) from the Jewish high school of the central education committee in Vilna (1939), 80 pp.; Anotomye, fizyologye un higyene fun mentsh, with a special chapter on bacteria and infectious diseases by G. Gelman (Vilna, 1940), 224 pp.  Biber received one of the awards for literature, school, and theater presented by the Bund in Warsaw in 1937.

Sources: Vilner tog (June 15, 1939); Sh. Katsherginski, Khurbn vilne (The Holocaust in Vilna) (New York, 1947), pp. 181-82; Dr. M. Dvorzhetski (Mark Dvorzetsky), Yerusholayim delite in kamf un umkum (The Jerusalem of Lithuania in struggle and death) (Paris, 1948), p. 225; Lerer-zikher-bukh, di umgekumene lerer in tsisho shuln in poyln (Remembrance volume for teachers, the murdered teachers in the Tsisho schools in Poland) (New York, 1954). pp. 43-47.