MENDL ROZENHOYZ (ROZNHOYZ)

MENDL ROZENHOYZ (ROZNHOYZ) (1901-1982)

            He was a Soviet Jewish bibliographer, born in Bobruysk, Byelorussia, descended from a highly devout family. He graduated from middle school there, and in 1922 he began working in the Bobruisk municipal Jewish library; in 1924 he moved to Moscow to work for the Central Jewish Library in Moscow, in the libraries of the pedagogical institute, of the Mayrevke (University of the West), of the Yiddish State Theater on Moscow, and of Emes Publishers. It was there that he began work in the field of Yiddish bibliography. Everywhere he complemented the funds and drew up recommendation slips. He wrote bibliographical surveys of published Yiddish books for: Emes (Truth) and Sovetish (Soviet) in Moscow, and Oktyabr (October) and Shtern (Star) in Minsk, among other serials. With the start of WWII, he went off to the front, and after demobilization he returned to work for the library of Emes Publishers. He experienced much in connection with the tragedy of the Yiddish book in the Soviet Union. Particularly difficult was the elimination of Yiddish libraries at Emes publishers and Eynikeyt (Unity). He later published articles and notices on Soviet Yiddish bibliographers who had died or were murdered in the ghettos or at the front, mainly in Sovetish heymland (Soviet homeland) in Moscow, for which he was in charge of the bibliographic section. He was overjoyed when in the early 1960s the editorial board of the journal invited him to be in charge of putting together a library for the journal. These were mostly very rare volumes which he saved from destruction, books which over the course of some three decades consituted new finds. During this period of time, he wrote up a series of bibliographic notices and published them in journals.

Source: Sovetish heymland (Moscow) 12 (1971), p. 183.

Khayim Maltinski

[Additional information from: Chaim Beider, Leksikon fun yidishe shrayber in ratn-farband (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers in the Soviet Union), ed. Boris Sandler and Gennady Estraikh (New York: Congress for Jewish Culture, Inc., 2011), pp. 350-51.]