MEYER DZHYALOVSKI (MIECZYSŁAW DZIALOWSKI)

MEYER DZHYALOVSKI (MIECZYSŁAW DZIALOWSKI) (1900-March 20, 1943)

            He was born in the Warsaw region, into a poor family.  He was sent during WWI to Germany to perform conscript labor.  He worked in the coal mines near Frankfurt.  In the early 1920s, he was working as a clerk in a business in Warsaw.  From his meager earnings, he supported his poor family.  In 1929 he emigrated to France.  He worked in Paris, assembling rubber raincoats.  The chemical make-up of the materials had a deleterious effect on his health, and he became ill with a lung ailment.  He later had to learn a new trade, women’s purses.  He began writing poetry in the early 1920s in Warsaw.  His environment was the Workers Home at 23 Karmelicka, where he met young writers and read his works aloud before them.  He published his poems in Ilustrirte vokh (Illustrated week) and Literarishe bleter (Literary leaves) in Warsaw, Polyeser lebn (Polese life) in Brest (1924), Di prese (The press) in Buenos Aires), and Naye prese (New press) and Parizer zhurnal (Paris journal) in Paris.  Among his books: A broyt mit a meser (A bread with a knife), poetry (Paris: Yiddish Writers’ Association, 1937), 111 pp.  He translated from German: Gerhart Hauptmann’s Dos froyen indzl (The women’s island [original: Das Frauen Insel]) (Warsaw: Sh. Goldfarb, 1927), 342 pp.; and Bernhard Kellerman’s Idyot (Fool [original: Der tor]) (Warsaw, 1925), 517 pp.  When Paris was occupied by the Nazis, he went into hiding for a time.  During the great roundup of Parisian Jewry, he was discovered.  In January 1943 the Nazis took him to the Drancy Concentration Camp in the suburbs of Paris.  He was deported from there and murdered.

Sources: Shmuel Niger, ed., Kidesh hashem (Sanctification of the name) (New York: Tsiko, 1946); M. Litvin, in Yizker-bukh (Remembrance book) (Paris: Oyfsney, 1946); M. Shtamfater, “M. dzhyalovski in varshe un in pariz” (M. Dzhyalovski in Warsaw and in Paris), in Yizker-bukh (Paris: Oyfsney, 1946); Yehudis Kolman, “Mit m. dzhyalovski in dransi” (With M. Dzhyalovski in Drancy), in Yizker-bukh (Paris: Oyfsney, 1946); A. Dorf, in Tshernovitser bleter (March 28, 1937); Y. Milner, “Umgekumene shriftshteler” (Murdered writers), Almanakh (Paris, 1955); B. Frenkel, in Jubilee publication of Undzer shtime (Paris) (November 1955).

                                                                                                                                      Zaynvl Diamant