User:Izaakb/Mordechai Bernstein



Mordechai Bernstein (b. ???, Moinești, România, d. 10 June 1934, Rosh Pina, Israel) was an early Zionist among one of the First Aliyah to Palestine (the British Mandate of Palestine) in 1882. Bernstein and his wife were among the Romanian pioneers who founded the farming community (moshav) of Rosh Pina in the Galilee.

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Biographical Note

Mordechai Wolf Bernstein was a political activist, night watchman, bookkeeper, carpenter, journalist, librarian, editor of newspapers and books, teacher, and researcher who lived in Poland, the Soviet Union, Germany, Argentina, and the United States. He spoke seven languages, Yiddish, Hebrew, Polish, Russian, German, Spanish, and English.

Bernstein was born on June 14, 1905, in Byten, in the district of Grodno, in West Bielorussia. He was the third child and only boy of four children born to Moshe and Zippe Bernstein. Bernstein received a traditional Jewish education, studying first with his father, who died in 1921, in Byten, then in the Jewish academies of Baranovicze, Slonim, and Bialystok. He later attended the Jewish Teachers Institute in Vilna. He eked out a living as a night watchman, studying during his shifts, and also acquired skills as a bookkeeper and a carpenter. Bernstein soon developed an interest in political affairs, becoming secretary of a Jewish workers' union in Slonim and working for the Central Committee of the Bund in Poland.

On June 7, 1930, Mordechai Bernstein married Zelda Goldin, also born in Byten on April 5, 1907. The Bernsteins moved to Warsaw, where their daughter Masha, the couple's only child, was born on March 21, 1931.

In Warsaw, Bernstein worked for YIVO, the Jewish Scientific Institute, whose headquarters were then in Vilna. He also extended his political activities, becoming active in a youth club of the Bund, צוקונפט (Zukunft), recruiting students from Yeshivot to the Bund. Bernstein collaborated on various Bund publications in Poland, writing articles for יוגנט װעקער (Jungt Veker), פאלקס-צײטונג(Folkstsaytung), אונדזער צײט (Unser Tsait), װאכנשריפט פאר ליטעראטור (Wochenschrift far literatur), ײדישע שריפטן (Yiddishe Schriften) and Glos Bundu.

After the invasion of Poland by the armies of the Third Reich in September 1939, Bernstein fled Warsaw for Vilna, under Lithuanian rule since October 1939. There he worked as a journalist and an historian for YIVO.

Zelda and Masha escaped from Warsaw during the winter of 1940. On the way they stopped in Byten, already on the Soviet side of the border. In 1941, a relative living in Chicago issued an affidavit for them. Zelda and Masha left Vilna by train to Kaunas, capital of Lithuania, and from there flew to Moscow. The Trans-Siberian train left them in Vladivostok, whence they sailed to Japan on the "Heian Maru." The two women reached Montreal, Canada in August 1944. Zelda and her daughter entered the United States in October 1945, settling first in Chicago, then in New York, where they were reunited with distant family.

In June 1940, Lithuania was annexed to the USSR and three months later, Mordechai was arrested for his political activities by the Soviet police (NKVD). He was detained in the Lukiski prison in Vilna, together with the future Prime Minister of the State of Israel, Menachem Begin.

After the war, he was repatriated to western Europe as a Polish national and returned to Poland in 1946. He moved to Germany in September 1948, where he served as a librarian in Stuttgart, working as a correspondent of YIVO in Western Germany and employed by the Jewish Cultural Restitution Successor Organization as a consultant. For YIVO, he collected materials, manuscripts and printed pamphlets on D.P. camps, Nazi Antisemitica, and any German Judaica publications. He thus transmitted to New York the files of the Central Association of Jewish Invalids in Germany for the years 1945-1949, the archives of the Culture Department of D.P. Camp Feldafing, and catalogues describing holdings of Jewish interest in various private and state repositories. By December 1951, he had sent to YIVO archives over 100,000 items, dealing mostly with the survivors of the Jewish catastrophe in Europe. While in Germany, Mordechai Bernstein researched the history of hundreds of Jewish communities destroyed by the National Socialist regime. He published some of his findings in the major Jewish publication in Germany, Allgemeine Wochenzeitung der Juden in Deutschland, and contributed articles to many other German Jewish publications.

Bernstein emigrated to Argentina in January 1952, supporting himself by teaching in a Yiddish school, the I.L. Peretz Shule. He supplemented his income by undertaking the editing of several Memorial Volumes dedicated to Jewish communities destroyed in the Holocaust. These volumes were published by immigrant benevolent organizations (Landsmanschaften). The memorial books came to be seen as substitute gravestones for slaughtered friends and relatives. To be editor of one of these volumes required many skills: among them raising funds for their publication. The editorial staff had the responsibility of collecting all the relevant information, securing contributors, editing their papers, and meeting publishers' deadlines.

Bernstein developed considerable talent and edited no fewer than five of these Memorial Volumes in ten years: with Dodl Abramowitz, he edited the volume dedicated to the Jewish community of Byten, his home town; later, on his own, the Memorial Volumes for Zamosc, Pruzana and Zyrardow. All were published in Yiddish in Argentina between 1954 and 1961. A fifth volume, on the Jewish community of Pulawy, was published in New York in 1964.

Bernstein's editorial success allowed him to write and publish three volumes in Yiddish on German Jewish history between 1955 and 1960. They were titled אין לאבירינטן פון תקופות (In the Labyrinth of Epochs), נישט דערברענטע שײטן (Brands Plucked Out of The Fire), and דאס איז געװען נוסח אשכנז (This had been the Tradition of Ashkenaz). The research for these three volumes was often based on the articles Bernstein had published a decade before in Allgemeine Wochenzeitung der Juden in Deutschland. These volumes were part of a trilogy entitled "A Thousand Years of Ashkenaz."

Besides his literary activities, Bernstein continued his political and cultural involvements. He published articles in Yiddish periodicals in the United States and South America, served as secretary and librarian of YIVO in Buenos Aires, and was a council member of the Jewish community of Buenos Aires. Drawing upon his knowledge and understanding of Latin American and Argentinean Jewry, he wrote annual notices for the American Jewish Year Book between 1954 and 1958.

In 1962, Bernstein emigrated to the United States, and settled in New York, where he had visited several times in previous years. On October 19, 1958, he had lectured at the Historians' Circle of YIVO on "Yizkor Books as an Important Part of the Literature on the Nazi Catastrophe." In 1959, Bernstein lived for six months in the United States, supporting himself by working as a researcher in the YIVO Library, ultimately preparing a description of microfilmed newspapers and magazines from Eastern Europe, a joint project of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and YIVO. The report was published in 1965 by the Abraham Cahan Fund.

Bernstein's attachment to the YIVO was marked by many donations. In 1962, Bernstein donated a large collection of rare books and pamphlets, community reports and ephemera from Argentina. In 1962 and 1963, he also donated photographs of D.P. camps in Germany and Nazi antisemitica.

At the time of his death, Mordechai Bernstein was involved in a multitude of projects: a history of the Jewish press in the Ukraine; a history of Jewish family names; a catalog of nicknames of famous teachers and rabbis in 19th century Lithuania; a collection of Holocaust stories for a college textbook; an article for the Jewish Daily Forward; and revision of a galley for דער װעקער (Der Veker), the weekly publication of the Jewish Socialist Farband, on whose editorial board he served.

Bernstein died in Manhattan on April 21, 1966 at the age of 61. =====