MOYSHE HAHN-BITINER

MOYSHE HAHN-BITINER (April 16, 1912-April 2, 1954)

            He was born in Mosty Wielkie, eastern Galicia.  Until age fourteen he studied in religious primary school, later attending a Polish Jewish middle school in Lemberg.  While still quite young, he became interested in labor issues and Jewish cultural activities.  He was the founder of the Jewish Workers’ Library in Lemberg.  During the period of WWII, he made his way as far as Soviet Russia.  Soon after the war, he came with his wife and daughter to Paris and there initiated the journal Der frayer gedank (The free thought, a periodical of free-thinking socialism), and he edited the Fraye tribune (Free tribune), a quarterly put out by the same group.  Under the pseudonym “A. Lemberger,” he published articles in Unzer shtime (Our voice) in Paris.  He was a co-founder of the periodical Frayland (Freeland).  At the start of 1952 he emigrated to Australia, took up an active role in local Jewish community life, became secretary of the YIVO division in Australia, managed the performance entitled “Khurbn hayaades in eyrope” (The destruction of Jewry in Europe), organized at the local YIVO a historical circle, and was secretary of the “Federation of Jewish Compatriot Groups.”  He wrote for the Oystralishe yidishe nayes (Australian Jewish news) articles and treatments of newly published books and was a corresponding contributor to the monthly journal Afn shvel (At the threshold) in New York.  He died in Melbourne, Australia.

Sources: Obituary articles and notices in: Fraye arbeter shtime (New York) (April 23, 1954); Unzer shtime (Paris) (April 26, 1954); Unzer gedank (Buenos Aires) (June 1, 1954); Afn shvel (New York) 3-4 (100-101) (June-July 1954); “In der yidisher un hebreisher literatur” (In Yiddish and Hebrew literature), Tsukunft (New York) (July-August 1954); Faryland (Paris) 3 (11) (July-September 1954).

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