KALMAN GALITSKI (1854-1915)
He was born in Shedlets (Siedlce), Poland, into the family of a
poor elementary school teacher. Until
age eighteen he studied in the synagogue study hall, later secular
subjects. He became a teacher and owner
of a private school in Shedlets. He was
follower of the Jewish Enlightenment, and via various circles a disseminator of
its early ideas among the young. Because
of this he was harshly persecuted by the religious. He served as an intercessor with the Russian
governor in matters of education for Shedlets Jews. He was the organizer of meetings of Jewish
writers and a personal friend of Y. L. Peretz and Dovid Frishman. He founded the association “Agudat aḥim” (Brotherhood society)
and “Yidishe kunst” (Jewish art), in which he gave lectures concerned with
Yiddish literature and led scholarly discussions. He published articles about science,
literature, philosophy, and quotidian Jewish problems in: Shedletser
viderkol (Shedlets echo), Shedlets lebn (Shedlets life), and the
like (1911-1914). He also contributed to
Hatsfira (The siren). During WWI,
he was evacuated to Chernihiv (Chernigov), where
for a time he worked as a teacher in a Russian high school. He died there during the presentation of a
lecture.
Sources: Y. Goldberg, in Sefer yizkor lekehilat
shedlets (Remembrance volume for the community of Shedlets) (Tel Aviv,
1956); D. Naymark, in Forverts (New York) (January 6, 1957); oral
information from the writer Y. H. Fishman in New York.
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