SHIMEN TSUKER

SHIMEN TSUKER (1911-November 1980)

            He was born in Vlotslavek (Włocławek), Poland, to Hassidic parents.  Orphaned at age seven, he was raised by a grandfather and an uncle, both fierce Gerer Hassidim.  He studied in the local religious elementary school “Yesode Hatora” (Foundations of the Torah) and continued his studies in a small Gerer synagogue.  He was among the founders of the labor youth movement of Poale Agudat Yisrael (Workers of Agudat Yisrael).  Until the outbreak of WWII, he was active in the press and a member of the central council of Agudat Yisrael in Poland.  He visited cities and towns throughout Poland and campaigned for the ideas of the Aguda, organizing for Jewish Orthodoxy.  In 1931 he began publishing a weekly serial (together with Fishl Flakser and Yude Pshedetski) entitled Vlotslavker tribune (Włocławek tribune), in which he published articles on current affairs.  He was confined in the Lodz ghetto during WWII, and in 1944 he was deported to Auschwitz, where he lost his entire family.  He was also in the concentration camps in Siegmar-Schönau, Lower Saxony, Germany.  In the postwar period, he was in Poland until late 1946 and led the Rescue Committee.  He helped thousands of religious Jews to leave via the illegal group Briḥa (“escape” [organized, illegal emigration from postwar Soviet zones into Allied-held terrain in Europe]).  In early 1947 he moved to Paris, organized there the first postwar international meeting of Poale Agudat Yisrael, and was elected chairman of the movement outside the land of Israel.  He published articles in: Dos yidishe vort (The Jewish word) and Vlotslavek un svive, gedenk-bukh (Włocławek and environs, remembrance volume) (Tel Aviv, 1967).  From 1951 he was living in New York, where he died.

Sources: M. B. Kleynman, in Shearim (Tel Aviv), 1000^th issue; Moyshe Prager, Khurbn un retung, di geshikhte fun vad hatsale in amerike (Destruction and relief, the history of the Rescue Committee in America) (New York, 1957), pp. 428-31; L. Levin, in Hamodea (Jerusalem) 30-31; Leyzer Vayzel (Elie Wiesel), in Forverts (New York) (Erev Yom Kippur, 1965); Dr. Y. M. Biderman, in Vlotslavek un svive, gedenk-bukh (Włocławek and environs, remembrance volume) (Tel Aviv, 1967), p. 128.

Dr. Y. M. Biderman