BOREKH-NOSN LIBESKIND

BOREKH-NOSN LIBESKIND (1904-December 1941)

            He was born in Lodz, Poland, into a working-class family.  He graduated from public school, and then went to work as an employee in the Lodz health insurance office.  He was one of the leaders of the Bundist youth organization, “Tsukunft” (Future).  Under the Nazis, he was (until winter 1940) confined to the Lodz ghetto; he then went to Warsaw, where he played an important role in the underground Jewish fighting organization.  He began publishing in Lodzher veker (Lodz alarm) in 1925, and he then wrote (using the pen name “Natan”) for Yugnt veker (Youth alarm) in Warsaw and Lodzher yugnt veker (Lodz youth alarm), among other serials.  In the Warsaw Ghetto, he contributed to the underground publications of the Bund: Byuletin (Bulletin), Tsaytfragn (Contemporary issues), Der glok (The bell), Dos fraye vort (The free word), Shturm (Storm), Unzer tsayt (Out time), Yugnt-shtime (Voice of youth), and Yugnt-gvardye (Youth guard).  He was also involved in the underground archive of the Bund.  In late December 1941, the Nazis grabbed him and he was killed in Treblinka.  A number of his reportage pieces of life in the Warsaw Ghetto (written in October 1941) were discovered in 1946, and they were included in the anthology Materyaln far prese un referatn, tsum 5tn yortog fun varshever geto oyfshtand (Materials for the press and lectures, on the fifth anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising) (Warsaw, 1948).  In 1945 he was posthumously decorated as an active fighter against the Nazis by Polish president with “Cross of Merit” (Krzyż Zasługi).

Sources: B. Goldshteyn, Finf yor in varshever geto (Five years in the Warsaw Ghetto) (New York, 1947); Unzer tsayt (New York) (November-December 1947), pp. 131-32; Y. Kermish, in Di goldene keyt (Tel Aviv) 27 (1957); A. V. Yasni, Di geshikhte fun di yidn in lodzh in di yorn fun der daytsher oysrotung (The history of the Jews in Lodz in the years of the German extermination), two volumes (Tel Aviv: Hamenorah, 1961), p. 166; Biblyografye fun yidishe bikher vegn khurbn un gvure (Bibliography of Yiddish books concerning the Holocaust and heroism) (New York, 1962), p. 54.

Khayim Leyb Fuks