YITSKHOK-AYZIK REMBO (REMBA)

YITSKHOK-AYZIK REMBO (REMBA) (December 23, 1907-August 1, 1969)

            A Hebrew and Yiddish journalist, he was born Kolne (Kolno), Poland.  He attended a “cheder metukan” (improved religious elementary school) and a secular high school, and he studied law in Warsaw and London.  He was active in the Zionist Revisionist movement.  From 1940 he was living in Israel.  He began writing in 1927 in the Revisionist biweekly Af der vakh (On guard) in Kishinev.  From that point, he published in party organs Unzer veg (Our pathway) and Di velt (The world) in Warsaw; edited the weekly Hebrew-Yiddish Medina/Medine (State) in Warsaw and the Betar booklet Populere natsyonal-biblyotek (Popular national library) in London-Riga (1938-1939); and contributed (in Warsaw and Kovno) to Moment (Moment), Heymish (Familiar) and Letste nayes (Latest news) in Tel Aviv, and Tog-morgn-zhurnal (Day-morning journal) in New York, among others.  He wrote a great deal in Hebrew and edited the Revisionist daily newspapers Hamashkif (The observer) (1940-1948) and Ḥerut (Freedom) (1955-1965).  He published a lengthy series of articles entitled “Tragedyes in mishpokhes fun yidishe gdoylim” (Tragedies in the families of Jewish celebrities) in Letste nayes; and it appeared in Hebrew under the title Avot akhlu boser (Fathers ate sour fruit) (Tel Aviv, 1973).  He translated into Yiddish: Y. H. Yavin, Yerusholaim vart (Jerusalem waits) (Jerusalem-Warsaw, 1933/1934); Menakhem Begin, Der oyfshtand (The uprising) (Buenos Aires, 1953/1954).  His own work includes: Zhabotinskis teg un nekht (Jabotinsky’s days and night) (Paris, 1951), 319 pp., a shortened version of the two-volume Bemiḥitsato shel jabotinski (In Jabotinsky’s partition) (Tel Aviv, 1943/1944); Jabotinski leolam veleamo (Jabotinsky for ever and for his people) (1944/1945); and the pamphlet Kemfer un bafrayer (Fighter and liberator) (Kaunus: Betar, 1938), 40 pp.  He died in Tel Aviv.

Sources: Getzel Kressel, Leksikon hasifrut haivrit (Handbook of Hebrew literature), vol. 2 (Merḥavya, 1967); D. Tidhar, in Entsiklopedyah leḥalutse hayishuv uvonav (Encyclopedia of the pioneers and builders of the yishuv), vol. 1 (Tel Aviv, 1947); Shmuel Rozhanski, in Idishe tsaytung (Buenos Aires) (August 21, 1969); Y. Nedava, in Rembo’s book Avot akhlu boser, pp. 9-72; Yeshurin archive, YIVO (New York).

Ruvn Goldberg