NOKHUM HOKHERMAN

NOKHUM HOKHERMAN (1899-January 1943)

            He was born in Noworadomsk, near Piotrków, Poland.  He studied in religious primary school and yeshivas, with secular subject matter addressed by private tutors.  He spent 1925-1926 in Israel, where he graduated from the Hebrew teachers’ seminary run by Mizrachi.  In 1927 he returned to Poland and settled in Warsaw, where he studied at university.  He married a daughter of Hillel Zeitlin.  He began writing in Hebrew and later switched to Yiddish.  Although he was a convinced Hebraist, he devoted himself to research on the Yiddish language.  He was the author of a “Frazeologishe verterbukh” (Dictionary of phrases) and “Leksikon fun der yidisher shprakh” (Lexicon of the Yiddish language), of which portions were published in the collection, Yidish far ale (Yiddish for everyone) (Vilna, 1938-1939).  These works called for care for their foundation and methodology.  He was in the Warsaw Ghetto together with the Zeitlin family.  On January 18, 1943, during the “smaller Aktion,” he was deported to Treblinka and murdered there.

Source: M. Turkov, Di letste fun groysn dor (The last of a great generation) (Buenos Aires, 1954), pp. 316, 322.

Khayim Leyb Fuks