YOYSEF TEL (JÓZEF TELL)

YOYSEF TEL (JÓZEF TELL) (b. June 15, 1904)

            He was born in Sambor (Sambir), eastern Galicia.  He studied in yeshiva, later in a high school.  He graduated in law from the University of Lemberg and practiced as a lawyer.  For a time he served as president of the “Hitaḥdut” (Unity) party in Sambor.  During the Nazi occupation of Poland, he lived with Gentile papers in the Carpathian Mountains.  Over the years 1947-1951, he as living in Paris where he was assistant secretary of the Zionist Federation and a member of the executive of the Association of Polish Jews in France.  From 1951 he was living in New York.  He began writing in the Polish Jewish Chwila (Moment) in Lemberg.  In 1926 he switched to Yiddish and published a long novella entitled “Tsvey shvester” (Two sisters) in Lemberger togblat (Lemberg daily newspaper); until 1938 he published articles and novellas in both Lemberg newspapers, and 1948-1951 he wrote for Unzer vort (Our word) in Paris, later for Nyu-yorker vokhnblat (New York weekly newspaper), among other serials.  In Polish he published a novel entitled Eksperyment, powieść (Experiment, a novel) (Warsaw, 1938), 192 pp.  He was last living in New York.

Khayim Leyb Fuks