YITSKHOK VAYSBERG

YITSKHOK VAYSBERG (1888-September 1942)

            He was born in Tshenstokhov (Częstochowa), Poland, into a poor, religiously observant family.  He studied in religious primary school, synagogue study hall, and later on his own studied secular subjects and foreign languages.  For a time he was active in the Zionist movement, later moving over to the Folkists [who supported ethnic autonomy in Diaspora, “diaspora nationalists”] and was an active leader among the associations of wholesalers and craftsmen.  He was the owner of a small Yiddish publishing house.  He began his own writing activities with correspondence pieces on Jewish life in Częstochowa in Hatsfira (The siren) and Der veg (The way) in Warsaw (1906).  He edited and published Di tsayt (The times) in Częstochowa (1927-1928); and Naye tsaytung (New newspaper) in Częstochowa (1928-1938), which he later unified with the Częstochowa edition of Warsaw’s Ekspres (Express) and entitled Tshenstokhover ekspres (Częstochowa express), published until the start of war in 1939.  Vaysberg was also the author of humor publications and joke books: Der purim-glok (The Purim bell), Der kundes (The prankster), Unzer yontef (Our holiday), and Yontef bleter (Holiday sheets), among others in Częstochowa.  He was killed in the Częstochowa ghetto during the September Aktion of 1942.

Sources: Biblyografishe yorbikher fun yivo (Bibliographic yearbooks from YIVO) (Warsaw, 1928); A. Khrobalovski, M. Tseshinski, R. Federman, Tshenstokhover yidn (Częstochowa Jews) (New York, 1947), p. 98.