Deer Smolar

Deer Smolar ( Yiddish הערש סמאָליאַר Russian Херш Смоляр / Transcription: Chersch Smoljar; scientific transliteration Cherš Smoljar , in English spelling often Hersh Smolar ; born April 15, 1905 in Zambrów , Poland , Russian Empire ; died March 16, 1993 in Tel-Aviv , Israel ) was a Yiddish writer and journalist , communist leader in Poland (initially illegally , for which he was imprisoned for several years) and in Soviet Russia , as well as a social activist of the Jewish community in Poland.

Live and act

Hirsch Smolar was born in Zambrów , Poland, in 1905 . He was active in the Communist Party from a young age and lived in the Soviet Union from 1920 to 1928 . He studied in Moscow at the Jewish Department of the Communist University of the National Minorities of the West (KUNMS) and wrote for Yiddish youth publications. In 1928 he was sent to Poland as a Comintern agent. Arrested for these activities, he spent four years in prison.

After the annexation of Polish eastern territories by the Soviet Union in 1939 to July 1941, he worked in the Białystok branch of the Writers' Union of the Belarusian SSR and was editor of the Soviet Jewish newspaper Bialystoker Stern . After the German occupation of the region in 1941, he organized the resistance in the Minsk ghetto before he fled and commanded a partisan detachment . After the war, Smolar published his memories of the resistance struggle in the Minsk Ghetto (yidd. Fun Minsker geto (Vom Minsk Ghetto)); Moscow : Der Emes Russian Дер Эмес 1946; Russian Miteli Getto (The Avengers of the Ghetto, Moscow 1947).

In the black book edited by Ilja Ehrenburg there is a contribution from him about the Holocaust in the city of Minsk (“The illegal combat center in the Minsk Ghetto”).

He returned to Poland in 1946 , where he headed the Jewish Culture Department at the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR) and worked on the Yiddish-language newspaper Folks-shtime (Volksstimme), the Communist Party's organ in Yiddish.

From 1950 to 1962 he was the chairman of the 1950 founded Social-Cultural Society of Jews in Poland ( Polish Towarzystwo Społeczno-Kulturalne Żydów w Polsce ( TSKŻ )).

Considered by many magazines worldwide reprinted or cited editorials Undzer veytik un Undzer treyst (our pain and our consolation) from the Folks-Shtime from 4. April 1956 was David Sfard and Gennady Estraikh According to the first semi-official source of information about the liquidation of the Soviet-Jewish cultural institutions and its leading personalities in 1948/52.

“His Folks-shtime editorial (Apr. 4, 1956), reprinted or cited by many periodicals all over the world, became the first semi-official source of information about the liquidation, in 1948-52, of Soviet Yiddish cultural institutions and their leading personalities. "

In 1968 he was dismissed from all offices (see also March riots ). He went to Paris in 1970 and emigrated to Israel in 1971 , where he also worked in the academic field. He is buried in the cemetery of Kibbutz Shefayim ( Central District ).

family

Hersch Smolar was married to Walentyna Najdus (1909-2004). They had two sons: Aleksander (born 1940) and Eugeniusz (born 1945). His granddaughter is Anna Smolar (born 1980), a theater director in France .

Publications

• Fun Minsk geto (From the Minsk Ghetto ). Moskve [Moscow]: Melukhe-farlag Der Emes , 1946 ( Yiddish )
  • Translations:
  • ( Russian ) Miteli Getto Мстители гетто (The Avengers of the Ghetto), Moscow 1947.
  • ( English ) The Minsk Ghetto: Soviet-Jewish Partisans Against the Nazis. Holocaust Library, 1989, ISBN 0-89604-068-2 .
  • ( Belarusian ) Menskae heta. Barats'ba savetskikh habraiau-partyzanau suprats' natsystau. (The Minsk Ghetto. Soviet-Jewish partisans against the Nazis). Tekhnalohiia, Minsk 2002.
• Yidn on gel lates: Skitsn. ("Jews without a Yellow Star. Sketches") Farlag Yidish-Bukh. Lodzsh 1948 [also with Polish title:] (Żydzi bez żółtych łat. Szkice).
• Fun ineveynik. Zikhroynes vegn der Yevsektsye. (“From the inside: memories of the Jewsekzija”) Y..L. Peretz Farlag, Tel Aviv 1978.
• A Posheter Zelner. ("The simple soldier") 1952 - play.
• Vu Bistu Khaver Sidorov? (“Where are you, Comrade Sidorov?”) 1975.
• Oyf the Letster Pozitsye with the Letster Hofenung. (In the last position with the last hope, 1982)
• Sovetishe yidn behind geto-tsoymen. (Soviet Jews behind ghetto fences, 1986)

literature

• Smolar, Hersh , in: Encyclopaedia Judaica , 1971, Volume 15, Col. 6
• Wassili Grossman , Ilja Ehrenburg : The Black Book - The Genocide of the Soviet Jews. Rowohlt-Verlag, Hamburg 1994, ISBN 3-498-01655-5 (editor of the German edition: Arno Lustiger )
• Paul R. Bartrop : Resisting the Holocaust: Upstanders, Partisans, and Survivors. 2016 ( books.google.de partial view).
• Marci Shore: The Taste of Ashes: The Afterlife of Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe. 2014 ( books.google.de partial view).
• Anika Walke: The secret resistance in the Soviet Union: Jewish partisans. Berlin 2007 ( rosalux.de PDF).
• Elvira Grözinger and Magdalena Ruta: Under the Red Banner: Yiddish Culture in Communist Countries in the Postwar Era. 2008 ( books.google.de partial view).
• Barbara Epstein: The Minsk Ghetto 1941–1943: Jewish Resistance and Soviet Internationalism. University of California Press, Berkeley 2008, ISBN 978-0-520-24242-5 .
• Karen Auerbach: The House at Ujazdowskie 16: Jewish Families in Warsaw after the Holocaust. 2013 ( books.google.de partial view).

References and footnotes

1. ↑ ^{a b} David Sfard, Gennady Estraikh: Smolar, Hersh (2nd ed.) In: Jewish Virtual Library
2. ↑ To the newspaper Bialystoker Stern , cf. Jewish Daily Founded in Bialystok is First in Soviet Poland - Jewish Telegraphic Agency
3. ^ Barbara Epstein: The Minsk Ghetto, 1941-1943 Jewish Resistance and Soviet Internationalism . University of California Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-520-24242-5 , pp. 113 f.
4. ^ Black Book . 1994: p. 278 ff.
5. ↑ Photo of the grave

Web links

• Hersh Smolar - Minsk ghetto (video, as a contemporary witness in an interview with Claude Lanzmann ) - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Smolar, Hersh In: YIVO Encyclopedia.
• David Sfard, Gennady Estraikh: Smolar, Hersh (2nd ed.) - Jewish Virtual Library
• 1942: Not Hersh Smolar, saved by Genesis