YANKEV PISTINER

YANKEV PISTINER (December 29, 1881-August 30, 1930)

            He was born in the village of Fundu Moldovei, Bukovina [now, Romania].  He was orphaned on his father’s side when still young.  He studied to be a lawyer at the Universities of Vienna and Czernowitz.  From his student years, he was active in the general and Jewish socialist movement, initially in Austria and until his death in Romania.  Over the years 1920-1926, he was a Bundist deputy to the Romanian parliament.  He stood up strongly for the rights of the Yiddish language, literature, and schools.  His literary and journalistic activities began in the German-language Volkspresse (People’s press) in Czernowitz (1899), of which from 1903 he served as editor.  From 1907 he contributed to: the Yiddish weekly Der sotsyal-demokrat (The social democrat) in Cracow; the Vilna Bundist Folks-tsaytung (People’s newspaper), Di hofnung (The hope), Dos naye lebn (The new life), Der shtrahl (The beam [of light]) of which he was also editor, and Di naye tsaytung (The new newspaper) in Czernowitz; as well as Polish-language Bundist publications which appeared in print in Poland.  He died in Bonn, on his way back to Czernowitz from an election gathering.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 2; Biblyografishe yorbikher fun yivo (Bibliographic yearbooks from YIVO) (Warsaw, 1928), see index; Khayim Vayntroyb, in Tsukunft (New York) (December 1930); Dr. Y. and Leye Kisman, in Doyres bundistn (Generations of Bundists), vol. 2 (New York, 1956), pp. 222-24.

Khayim Leyb Fuks