YANKEV NISENBOYM

YANKEV NISENBOYM (ca. 1895-March 1942)

            He was born in Koriv (Kurów), Poland, to a father who was an itinerant school teacher.  He early on began to work.  Around 1917 he moved to Lublin.  Until 1924 he belonged to the left Labor Zionists, later becoming an active Bundist, although he official did not belong to the party.  From the earliest years of his youth, he dreamt of becoming a journalist and through self-education prepared himself for this objective.  He became one of the most important contributors to Lubliner togblat (Lublin daily newspaper) and later, when Sh. Y. Stupnitski, the first editor of the newspaper, left Lublin, he became editor.  He wrote editorial articles for it, as well as features under the pen name of A. Shvartser.  He was very active in community work in the city and helped in the construction of a large cultural building named for Y. L. Perets.  He was a member of the first management of Lublin’s “Home Manufacturers’ Bank” (Khalupnikes-bank) and was the director of the Lublin school organization.  He was the husband of the Bundist leader, Bella Shapiro.  In 1939 when the Nazis seized Lublin, he and his wife left the city on foot to Soviet-occupied territory, but soon they returned to Lublin.  He became an employee of the Judenrat (Jewish council) and, with his wife, carried on contact with the underground Bundist movement in Warsaw and the underground Polish movement.  In June 1941 he was arrested by the Gestapo, and two days late his wife was also arrested.  Both underwent excruciating torture, but revealed none of the illegal leaders.  After extraordinary efforts by the illegal Bundist leaders, Nisenboym was freed, but his wife was deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp where she apparently died.  After being freed from jail, Nidenboym again worked as an employee of the Lublin Judenrat.  In late March 1942, two Gestapo men entered the office of the Judenrat, summoned Nisenboym into the street, and shot him.

Sources: M. Rashgold, Dos bukh fun lublin (The book of Lublin) (Paris, 1952), p. 397; Yizker-bukh koriv (Remembrance volume for Kurów) (Tel Aviv, 1955), pp. 553-56; B. Krempel, in Doyres bundistn (Generations of Bundists), vol. 2 (New York, 1956), p. 98 (under the biography of Bella Shapiro); Entsiklopediya shel galiyut (Encyclopedia of the Diaspora), volume on Lublin, p. 699.

Layb Vaserman