YERAKHMIEL NAYBERG (JERACHMIEL NAJBERG)

YERAKHMIEL NAYBERG (JERACHMIEL NAJBERG) (1904-winter 1941)

            He was born in Tshelodzh (Czeladź), a coal mining town between Będzin and Sosnowiec, Poland.  In his youth he lost both parents and was raised by his family in Będzin.  He studied in religious elementary school and in a Polish public school, later becoming a worker in a print shop.  From 1920 he was living in Lodz.  He wrote poetry in his youth and debuted in print with “A lid fun a yosem” (A poem by an orphan) in Y. M. Vaysenberg’s Inzer hofening (Our hope) in Warsaw (1927), and he went on to publish poetry and stories as well in: Naye folkstsaytung (New people’s newspaper), Vokhnshrift far literatur (Weekly writing for literature), Foroys (Onward), Literarishe bleter (Literary leaves), and Haynt (Today)—in Warsaw; Naye folksblat (New people’s newspaper), Lodzher tageblat (Lodz daily newspaper), Inzl (Island), and Kvaln (Springs)—in Lodz; Di post (The mail) in Cracow; and Zaglembye vokhnblat (Zagłębie weekly newspaper); among others.  His story, “Dos hemd fun a toytn” (The shirt of a dead man), published in Haynt (1938), aroused particular recognition from Yitskhok Katsenelson.  In book form: Puste vegn (Vacant roads), poetry, with drawings by P. Zelman (Lodz, 1928), 107 pp.; Fun yener zayt mentsh, poeme (From the other side of man, poem) (Lodz, 1933), 100 pp.  When the Germans occupied Lodz in 1939, Nayberg departed for Bialystok, worked for a time as a printer, and later, when he had a passport made (March 1940), he received one with the paragraph (which did not allow him to remain living in larger cities) and registered as a “medic” to escort the transport of laborers who were recruited to go to Tashkent.  Soon thereafter he returned from there disappointed and, unable to find any work in Bialystok, he left for a village near Kremenits, Volhynia, where he found his friends, the Yiddish writer Vulman and Zaromb.  When the German occupied Byelorussia, he left the village, lived briefly in Nyesvizh (Niasviž), then returned to Kremenits, and there the Nazis seized him and shot him in a nearby forest.

Sources: Y. B. Gips, in Lodzher tageblat (October 22, 1929); Yisroel Shtern, in Haynt (Warsaw) (March 29, 1935); Yitskhok Katsenelson, in Haynt (July 5, 1938); “Yizker” (Remembrance), Yidishe shriftn (Lodz) 1 (1946); Khayim Leyb Fuks, in Fun noentn over (New York) 3 (1957), see index; Y. Goldkorn, Lodzher portretn, umgekumene yidishe shrayber un tipn (Portraits of Lodz, murdered Yiddish writers and types) (Tel Aviv: Hamenorah, 1963), pp. 137-44, initially published in Montrealer shriftn 1 (December 1955), pp. 35-41.

Khayim Leyb Fuks