Monday 16 June 2014

ARN (AHARON, AARON) ALBEK

ARN (AHARON, AARON) ALBEK (d. 1943)
Born in Ostrów, Mazowiecka (Ostrov, Mazovyetsk), Poland.  He was the son of the rabbi of Zhirardov, Rabbi Menakhem-Mendl.  He studied both Torah and Haskole.  Because of his conspiratorial work in the Poale-Tsiyon movement, he suffered persecution from the Russian police.  He was preparing for a baccalaureate in Warsaw.  At the end of 1913 he settled in Bialystok.  During WWI, he was active in consumer unions in Hazamir (The nightingale) of which he became the vice-chairman, later chairman.  In late 1918, he was a cofounder of the Folk’s Party.  At the founding of the Folk’s Party in Vilna in 1926, he was selected to serve on the central committee.  He was a cofounder and editorial board member of Dos naye lebn (The new life) in Bialystok, in which he published articles and a series of stories drawn from Hassidic life.  In 1921 he founded a publishing house, “Albek,” which put out an entire series of works, among them: Noah Prylucki’s Yidish teater (Yiddish theater), and P. Kaplan’s Krilovs mesholim (Krilov’s fables) and Yapanishe mayselekh (Japanese stories).  For a period of time he was a council member in the Jewish community and the city council.  He wrote a valuable memoir about Jewish writers.  He died in the Bialystok ghetto in 1943.

Sources: Byalistoker leksikon (Bialystok handbook) (1935); B. Mark, Der oyfshtand in byalistoker geto (The uprising in the Bialystok ghetto) (Warsaw, 1950), pp. 141-42.


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