Tuesday, 10 July 2018

KHAYIM PIZHITS


KHAYIM PIZHITS (1897-ca. 1940)
            He was born in Mlave (Mława), Poland, into a wealthy Hassidic family.  At age seventeen he passed the baccalaureate examination as an external student.  During WWI he was active in the Bundist movement in Mława.  In the 1920s he studied economics and social science at the University of Vienna and received his doctoral degree there.  He then moved to Warsaw and for many years was head of the Bundist emigration office and active in the leadership of the Kultur-lige (Culture League).  He was one of the initiators and editors of the anthology Sotsyalistishe bleter (Socialist sheets), 96 pp., which appeared as a factional publication of the right wing of the Polish Bund.  Over the course of years, he was the editor of Arbeter sportler (Laborer sportsman), monthly organ of the worker-sports association in Warsaw.  For a time he edited the Bundist Folkstsaytung (People’s newspaper) and contributed to the Bundist newspaper Walka (Polish for “struggle”) in Cracow (1924-1928) and to Yugnt-veker (Youth alarm) in Warsaw.  At the time of the Nazi occupation, he fled to Vilna in the summer of 1940 and attempted in a secret manner to get to Sweden, but he was arrested by the Soviets and was killed.

Sources: H. Gelernt, in Forverts (New York) (August 19, 1949); E. N-ski, in Pinkes mlave (Records of Mława) (New York, 1950), pp. 293-99; Doyres bundistn (Generations of Bundists), vol. 1 (New York, 1956), pp. 321-24.
Leyb Vaserman


No comments:

Post a Comment