BINYUMIN VIROVSKI

BINYUMIN VIROVSKI (1898-1943/1944)

            He was born in a town near Lomzhe (Łomża), Russian Poland.  He studied in religious elementary school, yeshiva, and later graduated from a teachers’ seminary.  He was active among the left Labor Zionists.  In 1921 he became a teacher of Polish at a secular Jewish school in Krynki and later in Bialystok.  At first he worked as a teacher in the Borochov school, and then, after he joined the Bund, he left the school, was a cofounder of the Kultur-lige (Culture league), and a Bundist councilor on the city council.  He began writing around 1929 for Lodzher veker (Lodz alarm), in which he published articles on politics and also on literature and theater.  When the Germans were approaching Lodz, he escaped to Warsaw, and there he was a teacher in the ghetto and a member of the underground Bund in Poland.  He wrote at that time a great number of poems which were to be included in a book entitled “Lider fun payn” (Poems of anguish).  Together with Nosn Smolyar, he wrote a Yidish-heft (Yiddish notebook) to teach Yiddish literature, which was used in the schools in the Warsaw Ghetto.  Until May 1943 he was in Warsaw, later deported to the death camp of Majdanek where he was murdered.  He also published under the pen name: B. Levinson, among others.

Sources: B. Goldshteyn, Finf yor in varshever geto (Five years on the Warsaw Ghetto) (New York, 1947); H. Goldberg, in Unzer tsayt (New York) 5 (1950); B. Mark, Umgekumene shrayber fun di getos un lagern (Murdered writers from the ghettos and camps) (Warsaw, 1954); Lerer yizker-bukh (Remembrance volume for teachers) (New York, 1955); Y. Sh. H., in Doyres bundistn (Generation of Bundists), vol. 2 (New York, 1956); Khayim Leyb Fuks, in Fun noentn over (New York) 3 (1957); Y. Kermish, in Di goldene keyt (Tel Aviv) 27 (1957).