YITSKHOK-ITSHL BROYNER

YITSKHOK-ITSHL BROYNER (1889-1944)

He was born into an elite, wealthy family in Lodz.  His father, Yankev Broyner, was one of the creators of the Jewish textile industry in the city and a community leader.  Yitskhok Broyner received a Jewish and secular education, graduating from a Russian high school and studying painting in Warsaw, Cracow, and Berlin.  He was one of the founders of “Yung-yidish” (Young Yiddish) and helped to bring a Jewish style into modern painting.  Until WWII he lived in Lodz, where he was involved with his painting and was active in the variety theater Ararat.  He began writing in Russian prior to WWI, and from 1919 he was writing in Yiddish.  He published articles concerning the plastic arts and theater issues in Lodzer tageblat (Lodz daily newspaper), Folksblat (People’s newspaper), Nayer folksblat (New people’s newspaper), and Yidisher zhurnalist (Jewish journalist), among others.  In the jubilee publication (1908-1928) of Warsaw’s Haynt (Today), he wrote a piece entitled “Yidish teater in poyln” (Yiddish theater in Poland).  He was in the Lodz ghetto, to which he came with only a violin, saved from German confiscations, and there he composed music and wrote songs, mainly of humorous-satirical themes.  During the liquidation of the Lodz ghetto, he was sent to Auschwitz and there he died.

Sources: Y. Shpigel, in Dos naye lebn (Lodz) (August 31, 1946); Kh. Berlevi, Almanakh (Paris, 1955), p. 103; Kh. L. Fuks, “Dos yidishe literatur lodzh” (Yiddish literature in Lodz), Fun noentn over 2 (New York, 1956).