ARTUR GABID

ARTUR GABID (1902-1942)

            This was the pen name of Arn Itkin, born in Lodz, the son of the writer Leyb Itkin who was also a Hebrew teacher.  Gabid graduated from secular high school and studied at Warsaw University.  Because of illegal political activities, he had to flee Poland.  He left for Paris, where he graduated as an engineer.  He was an active leader in the French Communist Party and a contributor to its press as a feature writer and essayist.  Because of Trotskyism, he was expelled from the Party in 1934.  He returned to Lodz, worked in a factory, grew close to the Bund, and began to write in Yiddish for Folkstsaytung (People’s newspaper) in Warsaw (1935-1939); he also published in Inzl (Island) in Bialystok (1935-1939), edited by Zishe Bagish, and for Nayer folksblat (New people’s newspaper) in Lodz.  When the Germans occupied Poland, he left for the East, spent some time in Bialystok, later returning to Poland where he lived until 1942 in a village in Galicia.  Through the efforts of the underground committee of the Bund, he was brought from there to Warsaw and was inside the Warsaw Ghetto.  In December 1942, he was brought to Umschlagplatz (collection point in Warsaw for deportation) and he perished.

Sources: B. Goldshteyn, Finf yor in varshever geto (Five years in the Warsaw Ghetto) (New York, 1947), p. 287; Dos naye lebn 30 (311) (Warsaw, 1949); Kh. L. Fuks, in Fun noentn over 3 (New York) (1957), p. 265.