YOKHONEN MORGENSHTERN

YOKHONEN MORGENSHTERN (December 1905-May 6, 1943)

            He was born in Zamość, Poland.  He attended religious elementary school and a Polish public school.  He was a member of the central committee of the Labor Zionists-Zionist Socialist Party.  He was secretary of the League for Working Israel in Poland.  He contributed to and for a time edited Zamoshtsher shtime (Voice of Zamość) (1928-1939); and Bafrayung-arbeter shtime (Liberation-Voice of labor) and Dos vort (The word) in Warsaw.  During the Nazi occupation, he was confined in the Warsaw Ghetto, a member of the presidium of the Jewish national committee and of the headquarters of the Jewish fighting organization, and he took part in the major battles in the uprising of April 1943.  He was led on April 29 from the burning ghetto through the underground canals to the Aryan side of the city, where he hid in a bunker that was discovered on May 6 by the Gestapo and was taken to the S. S. commander’s office where he was shot on the spot.  His brother LIBER MORGENSHTERN wrote poetry in the Ludmir ghetto.

Sources: M. Nayshtat, Khurbn un oyfshtand fun di yidn in varshe (Holocaust and uprising of the Jews in Warsaw) (Tel Aviv, 1948), pp. 514-16; B. Mark, Dos bukh fun gvure (The book of valor) (Lodz, 1947), p. 123; Moshe Tamari, Zamoshts (Zamość) (Tel Aviv, 1953), p. 289; N. Kantorovitsh, in Fun noentn over (New York) 3 (1957), pp. 339, 342; B. Ayzenkop, in Pinkes zamoshtsh (Records of Zamość) (Buenos Aires, 1957), p. 984.

Yankev Kahan