SHAKHNE-FROYM
ZAGAN (1890/1891-1942/1943)
He was born in Cracow. His father was a follower of the Jewish
Enlightenment and wished that his sons would pursue their studies, but Shakhne
at age thirteen left school to work in a furrier’s workshop. As an energetic and vivacious young man, he
joined the Labor Zionist youth movement, and within two or three years he was
playing a leading role in it. Over the
period 1908-1909, to be sure, he turned to his studies and prepared to sit for
the examinations and then enter senior high school, but the propaganda movement
for the submission of Yiddish as a mother tongue among the Jews of
Austria-Hungary during the census of 1910 pried him loose once again from
studying, and he became a traveling propagandist through the Jewish communities
of western Galicia. From that point
forward—aside from a short time when he was a student auditor at the Cracow People’s University named for
Adam Mickiewicz—he spent his entire life together with his
party. In 1911 he was selected onto the
central committee of the Labor Zionist youth association, and he began writing
for Di yudishe arbayter-yugend
(Jewish working youth). In 1913 he
became chairman of the committee of the Labor Zionists in Cracow. He spent 1914-1917 at the Russo-Austrian war
front and as a Russian prisoner of war.
After the Russian Revolution of March 1917, he worked in the Odessa
Labor Zionist organization and wrote for the local Yiddish daily newspaper Unzer lebn (Our life), published by the
Labor Zionists in Ukraine. He left
Russia in 1919, spent a short time in Vienna, then moved on to Poland, worked
initially with the western Galician district committee and later (1920) with
central committee of the Party, served as a delegate to the fifth world
congress of the Labor Zionists in Vienna, and joined the association’s main
office (with Nir-Rafalkes, Khanin, and others).
At the end of 1921 he moved to Warsaw, worked for the publishing house “Arbeter-heym”
(Workers’ home) and at the center of Jewish artisanal employees, and from that
point he worked for the Labor Zionist Party, taking part in all of its
international conferences, linking up with its left wing, and later
representing the Left Labor Zionists on the Greater Zionist Action
Committee. He also contributed to the stewardship
of the secular Yiddish schools in Poland and was a member—later, vice-chairman—of
Tsisho (Central Jewish School Organization).
In the 1930s he contributed to the left Labor Zionist weekly: Arbayter-tsaytung (Workers’ newspaper),
from 1935 to 1939 (with two brief interruptions) as editor-in-chief.
When the
Nazis seized Warsaw in 1939, Zagan remained in the city to work for the
Party. He helped manage the escape work
among the victims, contributed to organizing the Joint Distribution Committee’s
“kitchens” for the Jewish population, forged an illegal association with the
Polish Socialist Party, with Sonye Novogrudski led the secular Yiddish school
curriculum in the Warsaw Ghetto, remained an active leader of the Jewish
Cultural Organization, was a member of the Jewish National Committee in the
ghetto, was a leader in the Workers’ Council which called for armed uprising in
1942, edited (with Yoysef Levartovski, Yoysef Sak, and others) the illegal
publication Der ruf (The Call), and
was also one of the creators of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Bloc in the
ghetto. During the Great Aktion in the
Warsaw Ghetto, the Nazis in early August 1942 deported Zagan with his wife and
two children to Treblinka where they were all murdered. His death became known in June 1943.
Sources:
L. Shmueli, in Nayvelt (Tel Aviv) 24
(June 4, 1943); Y. Kener, in Forverts
(New York) (June 7, 1943; Kener, in Kvershnit
(Cross-section) (New York, 1947), pp. 224-27; Sh. Gurin, in Nayvelt 25 (June 17, 1943); Sh. M. (Sh.
Mendelson), in Unzer tsayt (New York)
(July 1943); Kh. Sh. Kazdan and L. Shpizman, in Tsukunft (New York) (August 1943); M. Mozes, Der poylisher yid (The Polish Jew), yearbook (New York, 1944); L.
Shpizman, Getos in oyfshtand (Ghettos
in resistance) (New York, 1944), p. 77; Zerubavel, Barg-khurbn (Mountain of destruction) (Buenos Aires, 1946), p. 126;
B. Goldshteyn, Finf yor in varshever geto
(Five years on the Warsaw Ghetto) (New York, 1947), p. 265; Yanos Turkov, Azoy iz es geven (That’s how it was)
(Buenos Aires, 1948), see index; Sefer milḥamot
hagetaot
(The fighting ghettos) (Tel Aviv, 1954),
p. 726; Ber Mark, Umgekumene
shrayber fun di getos un lagern (Murdered writers from the ghettos and
camps) (Warsaw, 1954); Y. H. Levi, Gezamlte
shriftn (Collected writings), vol. 2 (London, 1958).
Yitskhok Kharlash
