TSVI LUKATSHEVSKI

TSVI LUKATSHEVSKI (d. August 20, 1943)

            He was born in Rozhinoy (Ruzhany), the son of a manufacturer.  He studied in religious elementary schools, later graduating from a high school in Vilna, and later still studying in Warsaw, Prague, and Lemberg Universities; he initially studied philosophy and later medicine before becoming a doctor.  He began writing for Y.-Kh. Tavyov’s children’s magazine Haḥaver (The friend), and later published sketches, features, and articles in: Hatsfira (The siren), Haolam (The world), Hayom (Today), Lemberg’s Chwila (Moment) in Polish, Hadoar (The mail), Di tsayt (The times), and Byalistoker shtime (Voice of Bialystok) in New York; and in Bialystok: Dos naye lebn (The new life), Gut morgn (Good morning), Byalistoker almanakh (Bialystok almanakh), and Undzer lebn (Our life), for which he was a regular contributor.  He was a committee member of Bialystok TOZ (Towarzystwo Ochrony Zdrowia [Society for the protection of health]) and a speaker on popular scientific topics.  He was elected a city councilman in 1934 on the Mizrachi electoral slate.  He was a member of the Yiddish literary circle and vice-chair of the Hebrew literary association.  He was the chief doctor of “Gikhe hilf” (emergency assistance) in Bialystok.  Under the Nazi authorities, he worked in the ghetto hospital on Fabryczne, where he was—together with the 200 sick patients in the hospital—murdered on August 20, 1943.

Sources: Di tsayt (New York) (December 26, 1920); Byalistoker shtime (New York) (October 1924); Dos naye leben (Bialystok) (jubilee issue, 1919-1929); Byalistoker almanakh (1931); Gut morgn (Bialystok) (December 29, 1933); Byalistoker leksikon (Bialystok handbook) (Bialystok, 1935); Undzer lebn (Bialystok) (September 30, 1937); Ts. Klementinovski, Lebn un umkum in byalistoker geto (Life and destruction in the Bialystok ghetto) (New York, 1946); R. Rayzner, Der umkum fun byalistoker geto 1939-1945 (The destruction of Judaism in Bialystok, 1939-1945) (Melbourne, 1948), p. 199.

Yankev Kahan