SHIYE TILEMAN

SHIYE TILEMAN (December 7, 1890-August 1942)

            He was born in Drohobych, eastern Galicia.  He graduated from high school in Stryj and studied law and philosophy at the Universities of Lemberg, Graz, and Vienna.  During WWI he served as an officer in the Austrian army.  From 1920 he was a teacher of foreign languages in a Lemberg high school.  In 1909 he began his writing career, mainly in the realm of literary criticism and Jewish studies.  He published in Yiddish, Hebrew, Polish, Ukrainian, and German in: Der morgn (The morning), Hasolel (The paver), Divrenu (Our word), Der nayer morgn (The new morning), Dos togblat (The daily newspaper), Der yudisher arbayter (The Jewish worker), and Dos fraye vort (The free word)—in Lemberg; Haynt (Today) and Literarishe bleter (Literary leaves) in Warsaw; Davar (Word) in Tel Aviv; Forverts (Forward) in New York; Nasz Przegląd (Our overview), Opinia (Opinion), Miesięcznik żydowski (Jewish monthly), Nasze słowo (Our word), and Dziennik warszawski (Warsaw daily)—in Warsaw; Chwila (Moment), Voskhod (Sunrise), and Morija (Moriah)—in Lemberg; Nowy dziennik (New daily) in Cracow; and J.W.D.S. in Breslau; among others.  He was also a contributor to the bibliographic collections: Przewodnik Bibliograficzny (Bibliographic guide) and Entsiklopediya (Ukrainian general encyclopedia) in Lemberg, for which he reworked the majority of the articles connected to old Hebrew and Yiddish literature, Jewish history, and Jewish philosophy.  He was editor (from 1923) of the Zionist monthly Moriya (Moriah) and of the journal Hebraica Alma Mater, among others.  From German to Yiddish, he translated a work by Arnold Zweig; and from Hebrew to Polish, he translated Sh. Agnon’s novel Vehaya heakov lemishor (And the crooked shall be made straight) and Naḥum Sokolov’s Barukh shpinoza uzemano (Barukh Spinoza and his time), among others.  He also penned the preface to a volume of stories by Moyshe Stavski (Warsaw, 1935) which he translated into Polish.  Until WWII he lived in Lemberg, and, aside from his work as a teacher and a writer, he was active in the Zionist labor party Hitaḥdut (Union).  He was a traditional Jew.  When the Russians occupied Lemberg in September 1939, he became a teacher of Ukrainian in the local Jewish high school.  During the Nazi occupation, he was confined in the ghetto, where he made his living by giving Hebrew lessons.  In August 1942, at the time of the destruction of Lemberg Jewry, both he and his brother were transported to the Bełżec death camp.

Sources: Archive of G. Bader (YIVO, New York); municipal archive of Bialystok (New York); Biblyografishe yorbikher fun yivo (Bibliographic yearbooks from YIVO) (Warsaw, 1928); Y. Shiloni, in Entsiklopediya shel galuyot (Encyclopedia of the Diaspora), section on Lvov (Lwow, Lemberg) (Tel Aviv, 1956), p. 758.

Khayim Leyb Fuks