LEYZER-YITSKHOK FEYGIN

LEYZER-YITSKHOK FEYGIN (d. 1940s)

            He was born in Bialystok.  He studied secular subject matter and focused on literature.  He published in Hamagid (The preacher) a letter by Avrom-Ber Gotlober and Igrot mehalalel (Letters of the Mehalalel).  In 1899 he settled in St. Petersburg and became a contributor to Hamelits (The advocate) and Tog (Day).  He wrote articles, feature pieces, and poetry, using the pen names Azriel, Hagafni, and Elitsafan.  He also contributed work to Fraynd (Friend) and was in charge of the legal section of Veg (Way) and Hazman (The times).  His work appeared in: Haynt (Today) and Moment (Moment) in Warsaw and in Tageblat (Daily newspaper) in Bialystok in 1914.  In 1911 he published Shirim nivḥarim (Selected poems) of Abba Constantin Shapiro (Warsaw: Tushiya, 1911), 131 pp.  In 1917 he departed for Vladimirtsov, later moving to Harbin, where in 1920 he and Kirzhnitsn founded the first Yiddish newspaper in China, Der vayter mizrekh (The Far East).  During the Nazi occupation, he was killed in the Bialystok ghetto.

Sources: Jubilee issue of Dos naye lebn (Bialystok) (April 4, 1919); Byalistoker almanakh (Bialystok almanac) (Bialystok, 1931); Byalistoker leksikon (Bialystok biographical dictionary) (Bialystok, 1935); A. Sh. Hershberg, in Pinkes byalistok (New York) 1 (1949), p. 422; Byalistoker bilder album (Bialystok photo album) (New York, 1951), p. 96; Ber Mark, Der oyfshtand in byalistoker geto (The uprising in the Bialystok ghetto) (Warsaw, 1950), p. 141.

Yankev Kahan