YANKEV
(JACOB) PESKIN (August 7, 1881-1943)
The brother of Shmuel Peskin, he was
born in Vilna into a highly prominent family.
From his early youth he was a Bundist.
In 1900 he was sent by the central committee of the Bund to Dvinsk (Dinaburg,
Daugavpils) to direct party work and be its
representative in the local committee.
He was arrested in 1901 and deported to Siberia for three years. A little while later he escaped. From there he went off to study in
Berlin. In 1905, during the revolution,
he interrupted his studies and returned to Russia. In 1917 he contributed to the
Russian-language journal of the Bund’s central committee, Golos Bunda (Voice of the Bund).
In 1920 he settled in Paris, where he was active in the Bundist
organization and in the Socialist Party of France. In 1938 he became secretary of the largest
party division of the French Socialist Party in Paris. He served as co-editor of the Bundist
newspaper Unzer shtime (Our
voice). He published memoirs and essays
on the history of the Jewish workers’ movement.
During the occupation he was arrested by the Gestapo and was murdered in
Auschwitz.
Sources:
Sh. Herts, Doyres bundistn
(Generations of Bundists), vol. 1 (New York: Unzer tsayt, 1956), pp. 407-11; Arbeter-ring boyer un tuer (Builders and
leaders of the Workmen’s Circle), ed. Y. Yeshurin and Y. Sh. Herts (New York,
1962), p. 302 (under the biography for Shmuel Peskin).
Leyb Vaserman
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