AVROM LYUBES

AVROM LYUBES (1895-1938)

            The adopted name of A. Khaikind, he was born in a small town in Vilna district.  He studied in religious primary school as well as in a “cheder metukan” (improved religious elementary school) and Russian language with private tutors.  In 1910 he immigrated to England, where he worked as a peddler, a Hebrew tutor, a choir boy for cantors, and a dentist.  In 1913 he joined an elder brother in the United States.  He lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  In 1918 he joined the Jewish Legion, went through his military training in Windsor, Canada, and then he was sent, via France and England, to Tell El Kebir, near Cairo, Egypt.  He contributed (using the name A. Khaikind) to the mimeographed periodical Tsum breg (To the shore) in Yiddish, Hebrew, and English, published (1919) for members of the Jewish Legion en route to Israel, where he remained for two years.  In 1921 he left Palestine for Poland where he wrote: Di fargesene in kamf far erets-yisroel, di geshikhte fun yidishn legyon (The forgotten in the battle for Israel, the history of the Jewish Legion) (Warsaw, 1930), 196 pp., with photographs, maps, and letters from Theodore Roosevelt, Lord Reading, Sir Alfred Mond, Winston Churchill, and Edmund Allenby, among others; and Trumpeldor, zayn lebn un heldishkeyt (Trumpeldor, his life and bravery) (Warsaw, 1934).  He died in Poland.

Sources: Biographical details from Lyubes’s book Di fargesene in kamf far erets-yisroel (Warsaw, 1930); Legion documents held in the YIVO archives in New York; oral information from his friends, former legionnaires.

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