NOYEKH
LONDON (May 17, 1888-1937)
He was born in village near Motele
(Motal’, Motol’), Pinsk district, Byelorussia, to a father who worked as a
blacksmith. Until age fifteen he studied
Talmud, Hebrew, and Russian, and then he left for Vilna, became a charity
student at a yeshiva, and turned his attention to secular education. In 1905 he joined the Zionist socialist party,
and later switched to the Bund and was arrested. In 1909 he served in the Tsarist army, and in
1910 he fled to the United States, where he worked for the first two years in a
tailor’s shop and studied in the evenings.
In 1915 he graduated from an engineering school and went on to work in a
position near the city administration of New York. He was active in the American Socialist Party
and in the Jewish Socialist Federation.
His journalist activities began with the weekly newspaper Di naye velt (The new world), and later
he served as editor of the weekly organs of the Jewish Communist Federation of
the “Workers’ Party” in New York: Der
kampf (The struggle) from 1918 and Der
emes (The truth) from 1921. In 1921
he was also editor of Der proletaryer
(The proletarian), organ of the Jewish section of the united Communist Party in
America—it appeared biweekly. With the founding
of the Communist daily newspaper, Di
frayhayt (Freedom), London became editor of the workers’ section. He also wrote (1926) for Shtern (Star) in Kharkov. He
later made his way to Soviet Russia and there took up an important position as
an engineer. He published Mit der amerikaner ekspeditsye keyn
biro-bidzhan (With the American expedition to Birobidzhan) (Kharkov, 1930),
67 pp. His subsequent fate remains
unknown.[1]
Sources:
Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 2; Biblyografishe yorbikher fun yivo
(Bibliographic yearbooks from YIVO), vol. 1 (Warsaw, 1928), see index; A.
Pomerants, in Proletpen (Proletarian
pen) (Kiev, 1935), p. 43; Toyznt yor
pinsk (1000 years of Pinsk) (New York, 1941), pp. 325-26; Y. Sh. Herts, Di yidishe sotsyalistishe bavegung in
amerike, 70 yor sotsyalistishe tetikeyt, 30 yor yidishe sotsyalistishe farband
(The Jewish socialist movement in America, seventy years of socialist activity,
thirty years of the Jewish Socialist Union) (New York, 1954), p. 203.
Zaynvl Diamant
[1] Translator’s note.
It would appear that, like many in 1937, he was arrested, deported, and
then executed for fictitious “crimes.” (JAF)
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