YANKEV B. GOL

YANKEV B. GOL (October 14, 1914-January 13, 1952)

            This was the adopted name of Yankev Gelpar.  He was born in Brisk (Brest), Lithuania after his father’s death, and he was named therefore after his father.  He came from an elite household.  On his father side, he descended from the Rogatchover Gaon, and his mother, Matl, was the daughter of the well-known Brisker Magid, R. Eliezer Leyzerovitsh.  His brother was the writer Shloyme Ben Yisroel, a contributor to the Forverts (Forward) in New York.  Gol received a traditional Jewish as well as a secular education in Warsaw and in Otvosk.  He had a bent and a talent for music.  He studied at and graduated from the Warsaw Conservatory.  In 1935 he made aliya to Palestine.  There he began his journalistic activities.  He initially wrote treatises on music and musical performances for Israeli newspapers and magazines.  Later he expanded the scope of his writings into the realm of general reportage.  He gained a reputation for his reportage pieces on the treatment of those imprisoned under the regime of the British mandate.  Knowledgeable of languages, he also wrote for the English-language Palestine Post, the Hebrew-language Maariv (West) and Olam haze (This world), and over the course of six years was the correspondent for the Forverts.  He also translated books into Hebrew from world literature.  After WWII he made a trip through Poland, and in a poignantly human manner described the Holocaust.  He died in Tel Aviv after a short, severe illness.

Sources: D. Tidhar, in Entsiklopedyah leḥalutse hayishuv uvonav (Encyclopedia of the founders and builders of Israel), vol. 5 (Tel Aviv, 1952); obituary notices in Forverts (January 15, 1952) and in Tsukunft (March 1952); M. Brilyant, Sefer hashana shel haitonaim (Journalists' annual) (Tel Aviv, 1951), p. 384.

Zaynvil Diamant