DOVID GINZBERG

DOVID GINZBERG (1904-1943)

            He was born in Tarnopol (Ternopol), eastern Galicia.  He received a Jewish and a general education, before graduating from a practical high school.  In the early 1920s he moved to Breslau, studied the humanistic sciences at the university there, and at the same time entered the rabbinical seminary.  Over the years 1927-1928, he studied at a college in Berlin and at Vienna University.  In 1930 he received the title of doctor of philosophy, law, and agronomy.  He also received ordination that year from the Breslau Rabbinical Seminary and for a time worked as a teacher of religion.  Late in 1930 he served as rabbi in Bjelovar, Yugoslavia [Croatia].  In 1935 he moved to London and for a time was professor at Jews’ College, later returning to Yugoslavia.  In 1937 he received permission from his community to carry out some research.  He worked in London libraries and composed a number of historical monographs.  He published a few of them in various languages and publications.  The majority of them disappeared during the Holocaust years.  He was contributor to the monthly publication, Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums (Monthly journal of history and Jewish studies) in Breslau, in which he published on the history of Jews in Yugoslavia.  He contributed as well to the Serbian Jewish scholarly journal Omanut (Art ) 1 (Zagreb, 1937), with a piece on the history of the Jewish community of Salonika.  He was a regular contributor to Revue internationale des études balkaniques (International journal of Balkan studies) in Belgrade (1938).  He published a portion of his research in Yiddish concerning the life of Jews in Balkan countries in Di tsayt (The times) in London.  His series “Private yidishe briv funem yor 1533” (Private Yiddish letters from the year 1533) with commentary was published in Yivo-bleter (Leaves from YIVO) 3-4 (Vilna, Match-April 1938), concerned some of the oldest Yiddish letters; this was an important source in the history of the Yiddish language and of Jewish ways of life from older communities in Austria, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Italy at the beginning of the sixteenth century.  When the Nazis occupied Yugoslavia, he suffered terribly.  He was killed together with the Jews of his community during the Holocaust in WWII.

Sources: Information from R. Mordechai Breger, Arizona; and from Dr. B. Vaynrib, Dropsie College, Philadelphia.