BERNARD ZINGER

BERNARD ZINGER (June 16, 1893-June 29, 1966)

            He was born in Warsaw, into a merchant family.  Until age seven he studied in religious primary school, thereafter in a Hebrew school.  In 1910 he graduated from commercial school.  He spent the years 1914-1917 studying Polish studies and history at the Free University in Warsaw.  He was later a teacher of Jewish and Polish history at Polish Jewish high schools in Lodz and Warsaw.  He was a leader in the Jewish Folks-partey (People’s party) in Lodz and for a time secretary of its central party council.  In the elections to the founding Polish Sejm, he was a candidate of the party for deputy; he later left the party, moved in a leftward direction politically, and during the Moscow Trials of the 1930s became disappointed in politics altogether.  In 1918 he attended, as a newspaper correspondent, the Riga peace conference, and he visited Russia, the Balkan countries, and Turkey (1923-1924).  He was subsequently a Sejm correspondent for Haynt (Today) and Nasz Przeglad (Our overview) in Warsaw.  He was a keen political publicist.  When the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, he escaped into Russia and was arrested there and deported to a camp from which he was released in August 1941.  He lived in Kuibyshev until 1942 and worked there as a contributor to the press division of the Polish embassy; later, he left Russia with the Polish army and made his way through Iran to London where he remained for the rest of his life.  He began his journalist activities with Lodzer folksblat (Lodz people’s newspaper) in 1916, and from that point forward he contributed (in addition to Haynt and Nasz Przeglad) to: Nayer folksblat (New people’s newspaper) in Lodz; Dos folk (The people) in Warsaw; Vilner tog (Vilna day) in Vilna; and Haarets (The land) in Tel Aviv.  In later years he wrote for the Polish and English press in London, among others to the famed periodical The Economist, and he published in Polish his volume of memoirs, Moje Nalewki (My Nalewki) (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1959), 171 pp.  He also wrote under the pen names: Regniz and Meshorer, among others.  He was considered a writer of authority on Polish political life between the two world wars.  He died in London.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 1; D. Tsharni (Daniel Charney), in Tsukunft (New York) (January 1943); Z. Segalovitsh, Tlomatske 13, fun farbrentn nekhtn (13 Tłomackie St., of scorched yesterdays) (Buenos Aires, 1946), see index; Segalovitsh, Gebrente trit (Suffering step) (Buenos Aires, 1947), see index; M. Ravitsh, Mayn leksikon (My lexicon), vol. 2 (Montreal, 1947), p. 121; B. Kutsher, Geven amol varshe (As Warsaw once was) (Paris, 1955), pp. 177, 262-63; Khayim Leyb Fuks, in Fun noentn over (New York) 3 (1957).

Khayim Leyb Fuks