Thursday 26 July 2018

YANKEV (JACOB) PESKIN


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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