FALK LANDENBERG

FALK LANDENBERG (1904-September 1942)

            He was born in Tiktin (Tykocin), Bialystok district, Russian Poland, to a father who was a craftsman.  In his youth, he moved with his parents to Lodz.  He studied at the Torat Ḥesed yeshiva.  For a time, he engaged in business and worked also as a laborer.  He was a cofounder and later secretary general of Poale Agudat-Yisrael (Workers of Agudat Yisrael) in Poland and represented them in the Lodz Jewish community administration.  In 1929 he was a delegate to Kneset Hagedola (The great assembly) in Vienna, where he raised a proposal that the religious Jewish manufacturers should pay their Jewish workers when not working on the Sabbath and Jewish holidays.  He was also active in the Orthodox Hakhshara ((Training for agricultural emigrants to settle in Palestine) movement, and to this end he visited Israel in 1933 and helped found Aguda kibbutzim and colonies.  He began writing with both Hebrew and Yiddish poetry, published in Der yudisher arbayter (The Jewish worker) in Lodz, of which from 1933 he was also editor.  He also contributed to: Ortodoksishe yugnt-bleter (Orthodox youth pages) and Beys-yankev zhurnal (Beys Yankev journal) in Lodz; Yudishe arbayter-shtime (Voice of Jewish workers), Darkenu (Our way), Deglanu (Our banner), and Dos yudishe togblat (The Jewish daily newspaper) in Warsaw; among others.  In the first days of WWII, he fled to Warsaw, where he survived the first bombing of the city, and thereafter returned to Lodz.  In March 1940 he again left for Warsaw.  He was one of the main leaders in the underground relief work of Poale Agudat-Yisrael in the Warsaw Ghetto.  For a lengthy period of time he worked in workshops operated by Tebens [a German military production outfit], from which during the selection of August 29, 1942, he was deported to Treblinka and murdered there.

Sources: Y. Fridenzon, in Ela ezkera (These I remember), vol. 2 (New York, 1957), pp. 169-75; Khayim Leyb Fuks, in Fun noentn over (New York) 3 (1957), p. 242.

Khayim Leyb Fuks