YEKHIEL VAYNTROYB

YEKHIEL VAYNTROYB (December 6, 1879-April 20, 1938)

            He was born in Bialystok, then in Russia, into a Hassidic family.  He studied in religious elementary school and in synagogue study hall.  At age fifteen he began working as a textile laborer and was active in the Jewish revolutionary movement.  He moved to the United States in 1898, worked as a silk weaver in Paterson, New Jersey, and later returned to Bialystok.  In 1903 he again made his way to America.  Over the years 1905-1913, he served as general secretary of Workmen’s Circle.  He was also active in the socialist movement.  For many years he chaired the director’s council of the Bialystok Center in New York.  He began journalistic activities in Forverts (Forward), using the pen name “Y. Bloy,” in New York in 1900 with correspondence pieces on Jewish workers’ lives in Poland.  He later published articles, under his own name as well as other pseudonyms, in: Forverts, Nuerker shtern (Newark star), and Byalistoker shtime (Voice of Bialystok), among other serials.  For a time he was assistant managing editor of Tsukunft (Future) in New York, under the editorship of Liessin, and for many years was a regular contributor to Der fraynd (The friend), organ of the Workmen’s Circle.  He died in an automobile crash in New York.

Sources: A. Sh. Zaks, Di geshikhte fun arbeter-ring (The history of Workmen’s Circle), vols. 1 and 2 (New York, 1925), see foreword and index; Y. Sh. Herts, 50 yor arbeter ring (Fifty years of the Workmen’s Circle) (New York, 1950), see index; Herts, Di yidishe sotsyalistishe bavegung in amerike (The Jewish socialist movement in America) (New York, 1954), see index; information from Dovid Sohn, New York.