YISROEL VINIK

YISROEL VINIK (1899-August 19, 1942)

            He was born in Zgierzh (Zgierz), near Lodz, Poland, and he graduated from a secondary school there.  At the beginning of the 1920s, he moved to Warsaw, became a teacher, and was also the manager of the summer colonies of Jewish teachers.  He was politically active in the Bund.  He was later confined in the Warsaw Ghetto and was a collaborator on the Oyneg Shabes project and the underground Ringelblum archive.  Until 1939 he published reportage pieces, impressions, and travel narratives in Folkstsaytung (People’s newspaper) in Warsaw.  He later wrote stories of ghetto life.  One of his stories, written in 1941, was discovered in Ringelblum’s archive; entitled “Leyb demkovskis avekgeyn” (Leyb Demkovski’s departure), it was published in the collection Tsvishn lebn un toyt (Between life and death) (Warsaw, 1955), pp. 20-23.  He died during the first liquidation in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Sources: Y. H. in Unzer tsayt (New York) (August 1943); B. Mark, Umgekumene shrayber fun di getos un lagern (Murdered writers from the ghettos and camps) (Warsaw, 1954), pp. 56, 67, 109, 129; Mark, ed., Tsvishn lebn un toyt (Between life and death) (Warsaw, 1955), p. 14; Lerer yizker-bukh (Remembrance volume for teachers) (New York, 1955), p. 149.