Friday 10 February 2017

NOYEKH LONDON

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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