LEYBL GOLDIN

LEYBL GOLDIN (1906-1942)

            He was born in Warsaw to extremely poor parents.  He graduated from the first Jewish evening school in Warsaw.  From his youth he was active among Jewish laboring young.  Over the years 1922-1932, he was active in the Communist Youth Union, later among the Trotskyists.  From 1936 he was in the Bund.  He performed cultural work for the Association of Jewish Commercial Employees in Warsaw.  He published essays and literary criticism in Literarishe tribune (Literary tribune) in Warsaw (until 1932), and in Jewish Communist publications in Poland.  He compiled Hantbukh fun der velt-literatur, prese, kunst un visnshaft (Handbook of world literature, press, art, and science) (Warsaw, 1931), 536 pp.  He translated—from Russian: Maxim Gorky’s Dos lebn fun an iberikn mensh (The life of a useless man [original: Zhizn’ nenuzhnogo cheloveka] (Warsaw, 1927), 350 pp.; from French: Romain Rolland’s Mahatma gandi (Mahatma Gandhi), together with Y. K. Fogel (Warsaw, 1927), 166 pp.; from German: Ernst Tollar’s Hoplya, mir lebn! (Hoppla, we’re alive! [original: Hoppla, wir Leben!] (Warsaw, 1929), 166 pp.  During the years of WWII, He took part in the underground Bundist press.  During the Nazi occupation, he died of hunger in the Warsaw Ghetto.  In the collection Tsvishn lebn un toyt (Between life and death), in the discovered materials of Ringelblum’s archive (Warsaw, 1955, pp. 49-65), is his “Khronik fun a mes-les” (Chronicle of a single day), which provides a portrait of life in the Warsaw Ghetto.  He published under such pen names as L. Dosin.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, in Yivo bleter (Vilna) (January-May 1931); K. Marmor, in Morgn frayhayt (New York) (August 17, 1931); anthology from Yidishe shriftn (Lodz, 1946); In di yorn fun yidishn khurbn (In the years of the Jewish Holocaust) (New York, 1948); B. Mark, foreword to Tsvishn lebn un toyt (Warsaw, 1955), p. 14.