YOYSEF VAYTSMAN

YOYSEF VAYTSMAN (1893-May 1941)

            He was born in Lodz, Poland, into a well-to-do family.  He graduated from a Russian high school.  He studied law at the Universities of Warsaw and Rostov.  He was an officer in the Tsarist army at the Russo-German front during WWI.  He returned to Lodz in 1919, and there he was a prominent lawyer until WWII.  He was an active leader in the Jewish Folkspartey (People’s party) in Russia, vice-chairman of the association of Jewish front-fighters in Russia (together with Joseph Trumpeldor and lawyer Gruzenberg).  Later, he was a member of the central committee of the Folkspartey and vice-president of the central Jewish artisans’ association in Poland, a member of the city council, and vice-president of the Jewish community in Lodz.  He wrote initially for the Russian Jewish press.  From 1919 on, he published in Yiddish in: Moment (Moment) and Dos folk (The people) in Warsaw; Lozher folksblat (Lodz people’s newspaper) and the monthly Oyfboy (Construction) in Lodz (1927-1930), of which he was also co-editor (with Noyekh Prilucki, Lazar Kahan, and M. Balberishski); and Yivo-bleter (Pages from YIVO) (Vilna) 9 (1936), in which he published a piece about a Russian book, a bibliography of the Yiddish press in Russia.  In September 1939, when the Germans were nearing Lodz, he left for Warsaw, and he died there in the ghetto.

Sources: Biblyografishe yorbikher fun yivo (Bibliographic yearbooks from YIVO) (Warsaw, 1928); Der moment, jubilee publication (Warsaw, 1935); Khayim Leyb Fuks, in Fun noentn over (New York) 3 (1957), p. 255.