Tuesday, 29 September 2015

YISROEL-BOREKH GRUNDMAN

YISROEL-BOREKH GRUNDMAN (b. 1907)
            He was born in Lodz, from a religiously devout home.  Against his parents’ wishes, he studied in a secular Jewish school.  After graduating from the Medem School, he was sent—because of his great talent and eagerness to learn—to the Vilna Jewish teachers’ seminary.  He was later a teacher in Visoke Litovsk, and in the same Lodz Medem School in which he was earlier a student himself.  A talented pedagogue, he was also an active community and cultural leader.  He excelled at creating interesting games, jokes, and songs for school children.  Together with M. Gilinski (“Batke”) and K. Wapner, he published Shpil un farveylung (Play and recreation), with an introduction by L. Hodes (Warsaw: SKIF-biblyotek, no. 6, 1938), 184 pp.  When WWII broke out, he escaped to Bialystok and from there to Brest, where he worked as a teacher under Soviet rule.  Afterward, when the Nazis took the city in 1941, he joined the partisans.  When and how he died remain unknown.

Source: Lerer-zikher-bukh (Teachers’ memory book) (New York, 1954), pp. 116-17.

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