DOVID L. DITMAN

DOVID L. DITMAN (1908-1942)

            He was born in Warsaw, Poland, into a working-class family.  He graduated from a secular Jewish school, and later he was a student at the Jewish Studies Seminar in the Warsaw Culture League.  He later became an active leader in the Jewish trade union movement.  He debuted in print with an article concerning Mendele’s “Masoes benyomen hashlishi” (The travel of Benjamin III) in the anthology Bleter funem seminar far yidishistik (Pages from the seminar in Jewish Studies) (Warsaw, 1929).  He also published in this volume an important piece entitled “Poetishe formen in a pashutn vayberishn shmues” (Poetic forms in a simple women’s conversation), a characterization of folk Yiddish in Warsaw.  In the collection Bleter far yidishistik (Pages in Jewish Studies) (Warsaw) 2 (1931), which he edited with Leyb Kon, he published literary critical articles on Sholem-Aleykhem and Y. L. Peretz.  His essay, “Dos problem fun perzenlekhkeyt un mase in ‘di goldene keyt’” (The problem of personality and the masses in “The Golden Chain”) aroused at that time considerable interest in his fascinating and bold analysis.  During the Nazi occupation he was in the Warsaw Ghetto and there he died.