OSHER PERLMAN

OSHER PERLMAN (b. 1895)

            He was born in Warsaw, Poland.  Until the 1920s he was a member of the central leadership of the Folks-partey (People’s party).  He was later active in the Communist movement, principally in Gezerd (All-Union Association for the Agricultural Settlement of Jewish Workers in the USSR) in Poland, and a fervent proponent of the Soviet Union.  In 1934 he organized and directed an illegal trip to Russia and Birobidzhan.  From this trip he produced: Birobidzhan, shilderung fun a rayze (Birobidzhan, description of a voyage) (Warsaw, 1934), 256 pp.—it also appeared in a separate edition in 1934 in Buenos Aires with a forward by the author (143 pp.).  Because of a court sentence, he departed from Poland illegally for Russia in late 1935.  During the show trials of 1937 he was arrested and sent for many years to a Soviet camp in the distant North.  He miraculously survived, and was freed in 1955, ailing and broken, and he became a devout, religious Jew.  He was among the main contributors to Moment (Moment) in Warsaw (1920-1934), and he was a member of the editorial board of Dos folk (The people) in Warsaw.  He contributed as well to: Der nayer gedank (The new idea) in Vilna; Iberboy (Reconstruction) in Warsaw (1933-1935); Velt iberblik (World survey) in Warsaw (1935); and a number of illegal Communist publications in Warsaw, Lodz, and Lemberg.  Over the years 1935-1937, he was an internal contributor to Emes (Truth) in Moscow, and he wrote for Birobidzhaner shtern (Birobidzhan star) and Oktyabr (October) in Minsk, among other serials.

Sources: Biblyografishe yorbikher fun yivo (Bibliographic yearbooks from YIVO) (Warsaw, 1928), see index; Yidisher gezelshaftlekher leksikon (Jewish community handbook) (Warsaw, 1939), p. 265; Z. Segalovitsh, Tlomatske 13, fun farbrente nekhtn (13 Tłomackie St., of zealous nights) (Buenos Aires: Central Association of Polish Jews in Argentina, 1946), p. 107; Khayim Shoshkes, in Tog-morgn-zhurnal (New York) (July 7, 1956); August 31, 1958).

Khayim Leyb Fuks

[Additional information from: Chaim Beider, Leksikon fun yidishe shrayber in ratn-farband (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers in the Soviet Union), ed. Boris Sandler and Gennady Estraikh (New York: Congress for Jewish Culture, Inc., 2011), p. 284.]