ABRAM BRAMSON

ABRAM BRAMSON (c. 1875-1939)

He was born in Kovno, the younger brother of the well-known community leader Leon Bramson.  He grew up in an intellectual, nationally-disposed, Jewish household, in which Yiddish was spoken together with Russian and German.  He graduated high school in Kovno and studied medicine in Russia and Germany.  He practiced as a doctor in St. Petersburg.  He was very active in Jewish community life.  He was connected with the Jewish historical-ethnographic society and with “Mefitse haskalah” (Society for the promotion of enlightenment [among the Jews of Russia]).  Over the years 1903-1906, he published writings in Der fraynd (The friend) in St. Petersburg, among them a work concerning “Jewish Organizations of Firemen”; and he founded (together with Y. Frumkin, K. Brutskus, and Inzh. Vigodski) the publishing house of “Naye bibyotek” (New library), which in 1903-1904 brought out in St. Petersburg a variety of booklets in Yiddish.  Bramson remained in Leningrad even after the Bolshevik Revolution, and he was director of the museum commission of the historical-ethnographic society.

Sources: Kh. D. Hurvits, in Der pinkes (Vilna, 1913); Dr. M. Vishnitser, in Tsukunft (New York) (August 1928).