Sigmund löw (Ziskind Lyev), a ‘revolutionary proletarian’ writer

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Notes

Khaym Leyb Fuks, ‘Lyev, Ziskind’, in Leksikon fun der nayer yidisher literatur (Lexicon of New Yiddish Literature) (LNYL), Vol. 5 (New York, 1963), 177–78.

I would like to express my gratitude for their assistance with the research for this article to Christa Prokisch, Archive of the Jewish Museum of Vienna; Willy Weinert, Alfred-Klahr-Archiv (Vienna); Brigitte Dalinger (Vienna); Edna Nahshon (New York); Maria Kühn-Ludewig (Paris); and, above all, Frieda Löw-Soback (Stockholm), Sigmund Löw’s daughter.

The article by Kkaym Beyder, ‘Dos lebn un shafung fun di yidishe sovetishe shriftshteler – korbones funem stalin-teror: Ziskind Lev (1896–1937)’ (The Life and Work of Soviet Yiddish Writers, Victims of Stalin’s Terror: Lev Ziskind, 1896–1937), Sovetish heymland, No. 2, 1991, 138–39, seems to be based mainly on information in the LNYL. See also ‘Memorial-tsetl fun sovetishe yidishe shrayber un publitsistn – korbones fun di stalin-represyes in di 30-er–50-er yorn’ (Memorial List of Soviet Yiddish Writers and Publicists, Victims of Stalinist Repression in the 1930s–1950s), Sovetish heymland, No. 7, 1991, 181–82, a list reprinted in Arno Lustiger, Rotbuch. Stalin und die Juden. Die tragische Geschichte des Jüdischen Antifaschistischen Komitees und der sowjetischen Juden (Berlin: Aufbau 1998), 390f (with ‘Siskind’ wrongly taken to be the family name).

Biographies of victims are to be found in Hermann Weber, ‘Weiße Flecken’ in der Geschichte. Die KPD-Opfer der Stalinschen Säuberungen und ihre Rehabilitierung (Frankfurt/Main: Internationale Sozialistische Publikationen, 1989); MEMORIAL, Österreichische Stalinopfer (Vienna: Junius, 1990); Hans Schafranek (ed.), Die Betrogenen. Österreicher als Opfer stalinistischen Terrors in der Sowjetunion (Vienna: Picus, 1991); Walter Baier und Franz Muhri, Stalin und wir. Stalinismus und die Rehabilitierung österreichischer Opfer (Vienna: Globus, 2001). In none of these publications, however, is Löw mentioned.

Shire Gorshman, ‘Ziskind Levs goyrl’ (Ziskind Lyev’s Fate), Di yidishe gas, No. 2 (18), 1996, 94–100. As Gennady Estraikh pointed out to me, this is a reprint from Shire Gorshman, Oysdoyer (Endurance) (Tel Aviv: Yisroel-bukh, 1992); letter from Shira Gorshman (Ashkalon) to me, 1997.

I wish to express my gratitude to Professor Anders Bárány (Stockholm) for helping me establish contact.

My interview with Frieda Löw-Soback, Vienna, 21 August 2001 (henceforth: Interview F. L.-S.); LNYL, 177; Trauungs-Zeugnis (marriage certificate) issued by the Vienna Jewish community, from the private archive of Frieda Löw-Soback, who also gave me copies of other documents (henceforth: archive F. L.-S.). Letter from Frieda Löw-Soback (Stockholm) to me, 5 June 2001. The year 1898 as Löw’s year of birth does, in fact, appear in his Litfond, Soviet Writers’ Union membership card (No. 383, issued 1 August 1935), but here the date appears to have been crudely altered, having originally been 1896 as well (archive F. L.-S.). Oddly, the name is reversed: ‘Ziskind’ is found in the line ‘familija’ and ‘Lev’ in ‘imja’ (see note 2). Interestingly, Gorshman’s memoir (see note 4) has Golde Löw call her husband by the name ‘Lev’ on several occasions.

See Z. Lev, Oyfgang. Noveln (Vienna/Vilna: Nayer farlag, 1924); ‘Zigmunt Leyb’ in Yidish, No. 1, April 1928.

Michael John, Albert Lichtblau, Schmelztiegel Wien einst und jetzt. Zur Geschichte und Gegenwart von Zuwanderung und Minderheiten (Vienna: Böhlau, 2. verb. Auflage, 1993), 301ff.

In Gate 4 of Vienna’s Central Cemetery the grave of a certain ‘Lazar Löw aus Sedsiszow [sic!] 1861–1919’ is still to be found. Löw’s father was buried in Jerusalem. Information supplied by Sigmund Soback, email of 21 December 2003.

Meldeauskunft Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv, MA8-M-827/2001, 23 February 2001.

Interview F. L.-S. He emigrated to Palestine in the 1930s. Information from Sigmund Soback.

Trauungs-Zeugnis Löw (note 7).

Herbert Steiner, Die Kommunistische Partei Österreichs von 1918–1933. Bibliographische Bemerkungen (Vienna: Europa Verlag, 1968), 36.

Josef Tischler, Die Zukunft der jüdischen Heimstätte. Der Wiederaufbau des Landes Israel (Vienna/Berlin/New York: Interterritorialer Verlag Renaissance, n.d.).

If not indicated otherwise all bibliographical data on Löw’s writings are from the LNYL.

For an overview, see David Rechter, The Jews of Vienna and the First World War (London: Littmann, 2002); Harriet Pass Freidenreich, Jewish Politics in Vienna, 1918–1938 (Bloomington/Indianopolis: Indiana University Press, 1991).

Rechter, 64–65.

Murray G. Hall, Österreichische Verlagsgeschichte, 1918–1938, Band II, Belletristische Verlage der Ersten Republik (Vienna: Hermann Böhlaus Nachf, 1985), 303–10.

Anatol Schenker, Der Jüdische Verlag 1902–1938. Zwischen Aufbruch, Blüte und Vernichtung (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2003), 33.

‘Nossig, Alfred’, in Israel Gutman (ed.), Enzyklopädie des Holocaust, Vol. II (Berlin: Argon, 1993), 1,016–17.

See Sholem Adler-Rudel, Ostjuden in Deutschland. Zugleich eine Geschichte der Institutionen, die sie betreuten (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1962). Adler-Rudel (1894–1975), a social worker and Poale-Tsion activist, moved in the same political circles as Nossig and was also active in Vienna during the First World War and until 1919, when he moved to Berlin.

Dr Alfred Nossig, Einführung in das Studium der Sozialhygiene. Geschichtliche Entwicklung und Bedeutung der öffentlichen Gesundheitspflege (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1894); Mitch Hart, ‘Moses the Microbiologist: Judaism and Social Hygiene in the Work of Alfred Nossig’, Jewish Social Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1995, 72–97.

The February 1915 issue of the journal Süddeutsche Monatshefte, a mouthpiece of German imperialist ambitions, was dedicated to Ostjuden, giving its readers examples of Yiddish literature (Peretz, Yehoash) in translation. Cf. Zosa Szajkowski, ‘The Struggle for Yiddish During World War I: The Attitude of German Jewry’, Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, No. 9, 1964, 131–58.

Eugen Höflich (Moshe Ya’akov Ben-Gavriel), Tagebücher 1915 bis 1927. Herausgegeben und kommentiert von Armin A. Wallas (Vienna: Böhlau, 1999), No. 84, 3 December 1919, and 367–68, note 354.

Arye L. Pilovsky, Tsvishn yo un neyn: yidish un yidish literatur in Erets-Yisroel 1907–1948 (Between Yes and No: Yiddish and Yiddish Literature in Eretz Israel, 1907–1948) (Tel Aviv: World Council for Yiddish and Jewish Culture, 1986).

Alfred Nossig, Zur Lösung des Palästinaproblems. Vorschläge für die Friedenskonferenz und den Völkerbund (Vienna/Berlin: Löwit, 1919).

‘Die “Partei” der Exportakademiker’, Freie Tribüne, No. 46–47, 30 December 1920, 3–4.

Hall, 304.

Murray G. Hall, Österreichische Verlagsgeschichte, 1918–1938, Band I, Geschichte des österreichischen Verlagswesens (Vienna: Böhlau, 1985), 92ff.

Samuel D. Kassow, ‘The Left Poale Zion in Inter-War Poland’, in Gennady Estraikh and Mikhail Krutikov (eds.), Yiddish and the Left (Oxford: Legenda, 2001), 109–28.

Freie Tribüne, No. 23, 1 October 1921.

Jack Jacobs, ‘Tempest in a Teapot?’, in Klaus Hödl (ed.), Jüdische Identitäten: Einblicke in die Bewusstseinslandschaften des österreichischen Judentums (Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2000), 179.

Mendl Naygreshl, ‘Di yidishe literatur un publitsistik in Vin’ (Yiddish Literature and Publicistics in Vienna), in Fun noentn over (From the Near Past) (New York: Jewish Culture Congress, 1955), 387–88.

John Bunzl concludes that the LPZ in Vienna simply ‘disappeared’ when its members joined the communists or emigrated. See his Klassenkampf in der Diaspora (Vienna: Europaverlag, 1975), 131. For a similar assertion concerning Bundism in Vienna, see Jacobs, 174.

See John Bunzl, ‘Arbeiterbewegung auf der “Judeninsel” ’ (Vienna: University of Vienna dissertation, 1976), 50f.

Lev, Oyfgang.

Z. Lyev, Proletn fun berlin (Minsk: Melukhefarlag fun Vaysrusland, Natssekter, 1934) (according to the cover, the novel appeared in 1935), 125ff.

Interview F. L.-S.

As a typical example of the official communist view of Austrian history in general, see Hermann Mitteräcker, Zur Geschichte der Kommunistischen Partei Österreichs. Veröffentlicht anläßlich des 40. Jahrestages der Gründung der KPÖ (Wien: Globus, 1958); on the events of 15 July 1927, ibid., 25 ff.

Beyder, 138.

‘Jiddischer Kulturkreis’, in Der Jüdische Arbeiter, No. 1, 12 January 1927, 4. Der Jüdische Arbeiter was the name of the first Poale-Tsion paper in Vienna in 1903; it soon transferred to Galicia. On the Jiddischer Kulturkreis in 1927, see Yidish, No. 1, April 1928, 26–7.

See Naygreshl, 387ff.

See Thomas Soxberger, ‘Zwischen Partei- und Selbstverlag’, in Armin Eidherr and Karl Müller (eds.), Jiddische Literatur und Kultur aus Österreich. Zwischenwelt Jahrbuch 8 (Klagenfurt/Celovec: Theodor Kramer Gesellschaft/Drava, 2003), 259.

Melekh Rawicz, ‘A. B. Cerata. An Intimate Portrait’, in A. Losh (ed.), Memorial Book of the Community of Radomsk and Vicinity (Tel Aviv: Former Residents of Radomsk, 1967), 286–87, English translation at www.Jewishgen.org/yizkor/Radomsko/Radomsko.html.

I found two books published by Cerata in Poland: Itsik Manger, Velvl Zbarzher shraybt briv tsu Malke’le der sheyner (Velvl Zbarzher Writes Letters to Malke’le the Beautiful) (Warsaw/Vienna, 1937) and Moyshe Shimel, Mir iz umetik. Lider (I Feel Gloomy. Poems) (Warsaw/Vienna, 1937).

Paradoxically it seems that this saved his live because he was spared a planned show trial against ‘leaders of world Jewry’. A certain ‘Zerapha’, which I suppose to be Cerata, is mentioned together with Abraham Lecache and Marc Jarblum (1887–1972) in the preparation of the trial. See Gerald Schwab, The Day the Holocaust Began: The Odyssey of Herschel Grynszpan (New York: Praeger, 1990), 161.

Ber Shnaper, Opshyom (Vienna/Lemberg: Kulturfareyn, 1927); ‘Shnaper, Ber’, in LNYL, Vol. 8, 1981, 748.

Mendl Naygreshl, Kaylekhdike teg (Round Days) (Vienna: Farlag Tsushtayer, 1935).

Z. Lev, ‘Yidishe kultur in Mayrev-Eyrope’ (Jewish Culture in Western Europe), Yidish, No. 2, 1928, 3–4.

Yidish, No. 1, April 1928.

Ibid., No. 3–4, June–July 1928, 41.

John/Lichtblau, 277–89; Eduard Kubu and Gudrun Exner, Tschechen und Tschechinnen. Vermögensentzug und Restitution (Vienna: Historikerkommission, 2002), 1ff. (see also www.historikerkommission.gv.at/english_home.html).

Naygreshl, 390–91.

The Yiddish writer Josef Burg (Czernowitz), who met Neugröschel in Vienna in 1936, recalls him as a ‘Salon-Bolschewik’ (fellow-traveller) (information from Armin Eidherr, Salzburg). In May 1936 Neugröschel met in the Soviet Union Yiddish writers and cultural figures such as Mikhoels – see Josef Burg, Ein Gesang über allen Gesängen (Leipzig: St Benno Verlag, 1998), 84.

On Yiddish theatre in Vienna, see Brigitte Dalinger, Quellenedition zur Geschichte des jüdischen Theaters in Wien (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2003).

Z. Lev, ‘Aroys mit reyd!’ (Speak Out!), Yidish, No. 1, 1928, 3–5.

M(endl) Zinger, ‘Oyf a faltshn veg’ (On the Wrong Path), Yidish, No. 2, May 1928, 2–3.

A. B. Cerata, ‘Far vos iz der kamf far yidish in Vin aza shverer?’ (Why is the Struggle for Yiddish in Vienna So Hard?), Yidish, No. 1, 1928, 22–24.

Bunzl, Klassenkampf, 144ff.

Dr Willy Weinert of the Alfred-Klahr-Archiv, Vienna, informed me that, to his knowledge, no documents or other hints concerning a ‘Jewish section’ within the KPÖ are extant. I hope to shed light on this matter in an article on the Yiddish left in Vienna.

Yidish, No 1, April 1928, 26.

Y. K., ‘Lifshits (Livshits) Moyshe’, in LNYL, Vol. 5, 1963, 220–22; Melekh Ravitsh, Dos mayse-bukh fun mayn lebn II (The Story of My Life, Vol. 2) (Buenos Aires: Tsentralfarband fun yidn in Argentine, 1963), 189–92.

M(ikhl) Kon, ‘Der matsev fun di yidn in Rusland’ (The Situation of the Jews in Russia), Yidish, No. 2, May 1928, 7–10; M. Kon, ‘Der ekonomisher matsev fun di yidn in Rusland’ (The Economic Situation of the Jews in Russia), Yidish, No. 3–4, June–July 1928, 9–14. On his biography, see Evelyn Adunka, Die vierte Gemeinde (Berlin/Vienna: Philo, 2000), 61–64.

Both Rote Hilfe and IAH were active in Vienna, Red Aid providing legal support for political prisoners and housing and material support for communist emigrants. See Lily Beer-Jergitsch, ‘Rote Hilfe’ (typescript), Dokumentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstandes, document 16.608.

Gerald Musger, ‘Der “Bund der proletarisch-revolutionären Schriftsteller Österreichs” ’ (Graz, dissertation, 1977). Löw is not mentioned in this dissertation, but not all members of the group are known by name.

Friederike Löw, ‘Autobiographie’, in Alfred Klahr-Archiv (Vienna).

‘Acht, Peter’, International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933–1945, Vol. 2, Part 1 (A-K) (Munich: K. G. Saur, 1983), 5.

See note 16 above.

Z. Lyev, Poyln, a shekhthoyz far mentshn (Poland, a Slaughterhouse for People) (New York: Morgn frayhayt, 1933), inside of back cover.

Interview F. L.-S. She was not, however, absolutely sure about the name ‘Haberman’.

Letter and interview F. L.-S.

Letter from Siskind Ljew to Communist Party organisation in Denmark, undated (June 1933) (archive F. L.-S.).

Delegate’s card Siskind Ljew to Congrès Ouvrier Antifasciste (archive F. L.-S.).

Letter, June 1933.

Babette Gross, Willi Münzenberg. Eine politische Biographie (Stuttgart: dva, 1968, 2nd ed.), 270f.

Note by Munch-Petersen to Löw with Danish Communist Party letterhead (archive F. L.-S.).

On Munch-Peterson’s fate, see Ole Sohn, Fra Folketinget til celle 290 (Copenhagen: Vindrose, 1992).

Charlotte Rombach, Gelebte Solidarität. Schutzbundkinder in der Sowjetunion (Vienna: Alfred-Klahr Gesellschaft, 2003), 51.

Interview F. L.-S.

See note 16 above.

See note 38 above.

See note 16 above. For a description of Löw’s stories, see Gorshman, 96ff.

Edna Nahshon, Yiddish Proletarian Theatre: The Artef (Westport, 1998), 141–44.

Yehuda Slutsky, ‘Jews at the First Congress of Soviet Writers’, Soviet Jewish Affairs, Vol. 4, No. 2, 1972, 61–70; list of participating Yiddish writers, ibid., 63.

Gorshman, 94. Gorshman mentions in her memoir that they took care to distance themselves from Löw after his arrest. She refused to tell me who the couple in question were.

Frieda Löw-Soback notes that Gorshman took poetic licence in her account, but confirms that she did help the family on several occasions (interview F. L.-S.).

Interview F. L.-S.; Gorshman, 95ff. provides a different chain of events, but the account by Löw’s daughter seems to me more reliable and is given here.

From Oktyabr, No. 121, Minsk 1937, cited in LNYL, 178.

‘The Great Terror and the Jews’, Soviet Jewish Affairs, Vol. 4, No. 2, 1974, 80–86.

See Hans Schafranek unter Mitarbeit von Natalja Mussijenko, Kinderheim No. 6. Österreichische und deutsche Kinder im sowjetischen Exil (Vienna: Döcker, 1998). For a more positive picture of the home, see Charlotte Rombach, Gelebte Solidarität. Österreichische Schutzbundkinder in der Sowjetunion (Vienna: Alfred Klahr-Gesellschaft, 2002).

Interview F. L.-S.; Gorshman, 99.

Schafranek/Mussijenko, 129 f; Rombach, 23f.

LNYL, 178.

Letter from Frieda Löw-Soback.

Barry McLoughlin and Hans Schafranek (eds.), Österreicher im Exil. Sowjetunion 1934–1945 (Vienna: DÖW/Deuticke, 1999), 634; Frieda Löw, ‘Mein Krieg’, in Rombach, 97.

LNYL, 178.

Gorshman, 96ff.

Frieda Löw-Soback enabled me to look at an amended copy of the novel from her father’s legacy, possibly intended for a new edition which did not materialise.