LEYZER TSUKERMAN

LEYZER TSUKERMAN (1852-1884)

            He was born in Mohilev, Russian empire.  He studied in religious elementary school, secular high school, and Kiev University.  In his youth he joined the Russian revolutionary movement.  He wrote poetry and distributed it in manuscript among Mohilev Jewish youth.  He left for Vienna, visited with Perets Smolenskin, and from there went on to Berlin where he came to know Arn Liberman.  In the summer of 1876, he returned to Vienna, became a typesetter for Smokenskin’s Hashaḥar (The dawn), and published in it his “Olam hafukh” (A world overturned) and “Rayon meolam haze vemeolam haba” (An idea from this world and the next).  He also wrote poetry for Haemet (The truth).  In 1879 he returned to Russia (St. Petersburg) and worked for the secret printer for “Narodnaia volya” (People’s will).  He was arrested, at his trial accepted guilt, and he was sentenced to eight years of penal labor.  He was deported to Siberia, and forlorn and despairing, when he was freed, in 1884, he took his own life by drowning.  In Warsaw’s Literarishe bleter (Literary leaves) of January 23, 1930 (pp. 61, 62, 63) and of January 31, 1930 (pp. 83, 84), there are poems which, according to Dr. Mikhl Berkovitsh, came from the pen of Leyzer Tsukerman.  These were republished in the anthology, Di yidishe sotsyalistishe bavegung biz der grindung fun bund (The Jewish socialist movement prior to the founding of the Bund) (YIVO, 1939), pp. 557-76, as well as a lengthy proclamation in Yiddish from 1880.  In the collection Royte pinkes (Red records) (Warsaw, 1921), pp. 105-6, are some of Tsukerman’s poems.

Sources: N. Mayzil, in Royte pinkes (Warsaw: Kultur-lige) 1 (1921), pp. 92-112; Mayzil, in Yidishe kultur (New York) (November 1952); F. Kurski, in Unzere tsayt (New York) (March 1941); Di yidishe sotsyalistishe bavegung biz der grindung fun bund (The Jewish socialist movement prior to the founding of the Bund) (Vilna-Paris: YIVO, 1939), pp. 21, 110, 127, 135, 145.

Yankev Kahan