MOYSHE VISOTSKI

MOYSHE VISOTSKI (d. 1943)

            He was born in Bialystok, Russian Poland.  He was an active leader in his youth in the Bund.  After the 1905 Revolution, he was part of the Jewish Art society that he, together with Peysekh Kaplan, Tsvi Vider, and Arn Albek, transformed in 1918 into the Folks-partey (People’s party); he was its representative in the Jewish community, helped to organize a craftsmen’s association, and for a time he administered the Bialystok retailers’ association.  He was the initiator in 1933 of the conference to found a Jewish scholarly council in Poland.  He was the cofounder in 1919 of Dos naye lebn (The new life) in Bialystok in which he published articles on politics; in 1924 he helped to found Byalistoker shtime (Voice of Bialystok), and later the daily Telegraf (Telegraph); and he was co-editor of Kuryer (Courier).  He took part in the first conference of the Yiddish provincial press of Poland that met in Vilna.  He edited a series of local publications, as well as a jubilee volume for the retailers’ union in Poland.  He was the co-founder and frequent chairman of the Bialystok literary circle.  He befriended young writers and assisted them morally and materially.  During the Nazi occupation he worked as a house steward and bakery overseer.  He was murdered in the Bialystok ghetto.

Sources: Naye byalistoker shtime (May 10, 1929); Yoyvl-bukh fun tsentraln detalistn un kleynhendler-farband in poyln (Jubilee volume for the central retailers union in Poland) (Warsaw, 1934); Byalistoker leksikon (Bialystok handbook) (Bialystok, 1935); Unzer lebn (Bialystok) (May 13, 1938); Shmuel Niger, Kidesh hashem (Sanctification of the name) (New York, 1947), pp. 81, 280; D. Klementinovski, in Byalistoker shtime (New York) (March-April 1948); A. Sh. Hershberg, in Pinkes byalistok (New York) 2 (1949), p. 417; Lite (Lithuania), vol. 1 (New York, 1951), pp. 1149-50; Refuel Rayzner, Der umkum fun byalistoker yidntum, 1939-1945 (The destruction of Judaism in Bialystok, 1939-1945), vol. 2 (Melbourne, 1949), pp. 61, 130, 150; Ber Mark, Umgekumene shrayber fun di getos un lagern (Murdered writers from the ghettos and camps) (Warsaw, 1954), pp. 148, 200, 201; Mark, Der oyfshtand in byalistoker geto (The uprising in the Bialystok ghetto) (Warsaw, 1950), pp. 141-46.

Yankev Kahan