AVROM-YITSKHOK GABIS

AVROM-YITSKHOK GABIS (December 19, 1892-July 1978)

            He was born in Zaloshen, Bessarabia, and educated in the town of Vodroshkov.  He studied in religious primary school, later devoting himself to acquiring his own education.  From 1909 he was in Argentina; he lived eight years in Buenos Aires and supported himself doing physical labor.  From 1918 he was an employee in the Jewish agrarian cooperative of “Fondo-Komunal,” in the colony of Dominguez, Entre-Rios Province.  From 1940 he worked with the headquarters of the agrarian cooperatives (“Fraternidad Agraria”) in Buenos Aires.  He was active in Poale-Tsiyon, past head of the “Jewish Laboring Youth” association, a delegate to the first Jewish cultural conference in La Plata in 1915, and a representative to the first Jewish agrarian cooperative in Argentina in 1916.  He was a leading activist in the Jewish cooperative movement in Argentina.  He began his literary writings with dramas and stories.  He wrote about cooperative and agrarian matters.  He was a regular contributor to the journal Gezelshaft (Community) in Buenos Aires (1918).  He later wrote for the yearbooks of the Jewish community in Buenos Aires.  In Yorbukh tshi”d (Annual for 1953/1954) (Buenos Aires, pp. 113-32), he contributed: “Di antviklung un der itstiker matsev fun der higer yidisher yik”o-kolonizatsye” (The evolution of the contemporary situation of the local Jewish YIKO colonization); in Yorbukh tsht”v (Annual for 1954/1955) (Buenos Aires), he wrote “50 yor baron hirsh-kolonizatsye” (Fifty years of Baron Hirsch’s colonization).  He also contributed to the D”r yarkhi-bukh ([Memorial] book for Dr. Yarkhi), edited by P. Bizberg (Buenos Aires, 1953), a collection in Yiddish and in Spanish; and for Argentiner yivo-shriftn (Argentine writings of YIVO) (Buenos Aires, 1942), he wrote “Di yidishe agrar-kooperativn in 1928-1935” (The Jewish agrarian cooperatives in 1928-1935), and in its fifth issue, he wrote “Nit-yidishe meynungen vegn der yidisher kolonizatsye in argentine” (Gentile understandings of Jewish colonization in Argentina).  He served as editor of Kolonist kooperator (Colonist cooperative), organ of “Fraternidad Agraria.”  He also authored the booklet: Vuhin firt di oysvanderung fun dorf in shtot? (Where does emigration lead from village to city?) (Buenos Aires, 1947), 24 pp. (reissued by Argentiner yivo-shriftn in its fourth number).  He died in Buenos Aires.

Sources: M. Bursuk, in Afn shvel (New York) (January-February 1955); Der shpigl (Buenos Aires) (January 1948).