AVROM-BER TSERATA

AVROM-BER TSERATA (1900-March 4, 1963)

            He was born in Nowo Radomsko (Radomsk), Poland.  He studied in religious elementary school and later became a Yiddish typesetter.  He spent the years 1916-1918 at work in an ammunition factory in Hungary, and later until 1934 he lived in Vienna; later still, until WWII, he was in Paris.  He was an active member of the left Labor Zionists.  Although he lived in poverty, he often helped Yiddish writers and painters to publish their works.  In November 1939, at the start of WWII, he was among the first Jewish cultural leaders deported to concentration camps in Germany and Poland.  In 1945 he returned to Paris and, until he set off for Israel in 1961, he worked as a typesetter for a Yiddish newspaper.  From 1937 he published reportage pieces, articles on painting and books, as well as descriptions of the Nazi camps in: Unzer vort (Our voice), Naye prese (New press), and Arbeter vort (Workers’ word) in Paris; and Yisroel-shtime (Voice of Israel), Heymish (Familiar), and Folks-blat (People’s newspaper) in Tel Aviv; among others.  After the emergence of the state of Israel, he collected, and purchased with his own money, artworks for a Jewish publishing museum in Tsfat (Sefad).  He was the museum director until his death.  He died in Tsfat, Israel.

Sources: N. Kenig, in Yizker-bukh tsum ondenk fun 14 umgekumene parizer yidishe shrayber (Remembrance volume to the memory of fourteen murdered Parisian Yiddish writers), ed. T. Spero (Paris: Oyfsnay, 1946), p. 41; Folks-blat (Tel Aviv) (March 6, 1963); L. D., in Unzer vort (Paris) (March 8, 1963); Meylekh Ravitsh, in Keneder older (Montreal) (March 23, 1963); Biblyografye fun artiklen vegn khurbn un gvure in yidisher peryodike (Bibliography of articles on the catastrophe and heroism in Yiddish periodicals) (New York: Yad Vashem and YIVO, 1966), see index; obituary notices in the Yiddish press (March 1963).

Khayim Leyb Fuks