YITSKHOK
MAYSKI-TSIMERMAN (b. 1896)
He was born in Lublin, Poland, the
son of a Hebrew teacher, one of the most revered followers of the Jewish
Enlightenment in Lublin. He received a
Jewish and a general education. He
graduated from the Lublin Russian high school.
Together with Yankev Glatshteyn, who was then a student with him in
school, he published (1912-1913) a hectographically-produced Russian-language
monthly. During WWI he was active in the
Jewish Folks-partey, and he represented it on the management committee of
“Cultural Association” and “Hazmir” (The nightingale) in Lublin. From 1918 to 1921, he was active in the Bund,
though he soon came into secret contact with the leftist movement, was a
cofounder of the Kombund (Communist Labor Bund), and subsequently became a
leading member of the Jewish Bureau of the Communist Party in Poland. He was active in Warsaw, Cracow, and
Lemberg. In 1933 he was arrested and
sentenced to three years in prison, but after serving half a year he was involved
in a prisoner exchange with the Soviet authorities. He then worked for the foreign office of the
Comintern in Moscow. During the Show
Trials of 1936-1937, he was sentenced to exile in the far North. With the formation of the Polish government
in 1945, he was set free from camp and returned to Poland. He began writing in Russian and Polish, later
switching to Yiddish. He was a
contributor to: Lubliner togblat
(Lublin daily newspaper), in which, among others items, he published articles
on Jewish philosophy; Lemberger togblat
(Lemberg daily newspaper) (1916-1918); Lebens-fragen
(Life issues) in Warsaw (1919-1920); and Vilner
tog (Vilna day). During his stay in
Russia, he also wrote for: Veker
(Alarm) in Minsk; Di naye tsayt (The
new times) in Kharkov; and Emes
(Truth) in Moscow. He also contributed
to the one-off Kombund publication Lodzher
veker (Lodz alarm), among other one-off publications of the Kombund in
Poland. He served on the editorial board
of: the illegal monthly Tsum kamf (To
the struggle) in Warsaw (differing years); the periodical Dos lebn (The life) in Cracow (1923-1924); the weekly Di tsayt (The times) in Lemberg (1924); Unzer vort (Our word) in Cracow
(1928-1929); and Fraye tribune (Free
tribune) in Lodz (1930-1931); among others.
He authored the pamphlets: Der
bund un der 2ter internatsyonal (The Bund and the Second International)
(Lodz, 1930), 44 pp., using the pseudonym Y. Mendlin; 35 yor in dinst fun der burzhyazye (Thirty-five years in the
service of the bourgeoisie) (Petrikov, 1933), 60 pp., under the pen name M.
Landoy. He also translated for the
publisher “Di velt” (The world): Wilhelm Bölsche’s Di libe in der natur, entviklungs-geshikhte fun der libe (Love of
nature, history of the development of love [original: Das Liebesleben in der Natur
eine Entwicklungsgeschichte der Liebe]), vols. 1 and 2 (Warsaw,
1922), 198 pp., including a ten-page Yiddish glossary for terminology, and vol.
3 (Warsaw, 1922), 152 pp. Over the years
1946-1956, he placed work in: Trybuna
ludu (Tribune of the people), Nowe
drogi (New road), and other Polish-language periodicals, but only very
rarely did he write in Yiddish. In 1956
he retired. He spent 1960-1962 in
Geneva, where he turned his attention to a monograph about Lenin and to
translating and editing the entire corpus of writings by Marx and Engels. From the beginning of 1963 he was back in
Poland. (His older brother, AVROM
TSIMERMAN, died during the Nazi bombardment of Minsk in June 1941; he was
well-known as a translator of Pushkin and Lermontov into Yiddish. He published in Lubliner togblat and in Vaysenberg’s Inzer hofening (Our hope) in Warsaw.)
Sources:
Y. Yashunski, in Bikher-velt (Warsaw)
2 (1922), pp. 182-83, 1-2 (1923), p. 45; Y. Sheyn, in Unter der fon fun k. p. p.
zamlbukh (Under
the banner of the Polish Communist Party, collection) (Warsaw, 1959), pp. 325,
326, 329, 337; Sh. Rozenberg, in Yizker-bukh
pulav (Remembrance volume for Pulav [Puławy]) (New York, 1963); information from
Yankev Glatshteyn in New York.
Khayim Leyb Fuks
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