ITSHE-MEYER MOSHKOVITSH

ITSHE-MEYER MOSHKOVITSH (1884-1942)

            He was born in Krushnevits, Vlotslavek (Włocławek) district, Poland.  He attended religious elementary school and synagogue study hall, and gained secular subject matter and foreign languages through self-study.  He was active in the Zionist movement.  He was the founder of the first theater-circle in Krushnevits.  He later worked in a commercial office in Warsaw, while at the same time completing high school and studying at university.  He later was living in Lodz.  He was well-known as a public reader of the writings of Sholem-Aleykhem.  He was a director of the “theater studio of Hazemir” (nightingale), where he staged Sholem-Aleykhem’s Goldgreber (Gold diggers) and dramatic works by Y. L. Perets, Perets Hirshbeyn, and Dovid Pinski, as well as European and American authors.  From 1906 he was also publishing humorous sketches and impressions in: Lodzer nakhrikhten (Lodz news), Lodzer tageblat (Lodz daily newspaper), Idisher zhurnalist (Jewish journalist), Nayer folksblat (New people’s newspaper), and Inzl (Island)—in Lodz.  He translated Irwin Shaw’s drama Bagrobt di toyte (Bury the Dead) (Lodz, 1937).  When the Nazis occupied Lodz, he departed for Warsaw and was a contributor to Dr. E. Ringelblum’s “Oyneg shabes” and other cultural institutions in the Warsaw Ghetto.  He was killed in the first “Deportation Aktion” in the ghetto.

Sources: Y. Likhtenshteyn and Khayim Leyb Fuks, in Lodzher veker (Lodz) (January 7, 1932); Inzl (Lodz) 1 (January 1938); Yanos Turkov, Farshlosene shtern (Extinguished stars) (Buenos Aires, 1953), p. 90; Dr. E. Ringelblum, Bleter far geshikhte (Pages for history), vol. 12 (Warsaw, 1959), pp. 26-27; information from his cousin, Sh. Koyfman, in New York.

Khayim Leyb Fuks