Lejzerowicz and the Cultural Circle
Who attended the “meetings” of the literary and cultural circle at Lejzerowicz’s apartment at Rybna / Fischstrasse 14A, Apartment 32?
From various sources, this is what I have been able to compile – all subject to correction, of course:
Julius Böhm, 1893-1942, Czech-born musician
Esther Fisher, writer
Rivka Kwiatkowska (later Kviatkovski-Pinchasik), Yiddish-language poet, born Łódź 1914.
During the ghetto period, she lived at Alexanderhof Str. / Limanowskiego 25, not very far from
Rybna 14A. Kwiatkowska survived the war and published several volumes in Yiddish.
Izrael Lejzerowicz, 1902-1944, Polish-, Yiddish- and German-speaking painter and Yiddish-
language poet
Sara Majerowicz, Yiddish-speaking painter, b. 1910?
Chava Rosenfarb, 1924-2011, Yiddish-language writer. During the ghetto period, she lived at
Hanseatenstrasse / Łagiewnicka 8, quite close to Rybna 14A.
Hilde Stern (later Hilda Stern Cohen), 1924-1997, German-language poet who lived in the same
building as Lejzerowicz during the ghetto period.
A second literary circle formed at the apartment (likely located at Jakóba/Rembrandt Str. 13) of the Yiddish-language poet Miriam Ulianover [Miryam Ulinover] (1890-1944), upon whom novelist Chava Rosenfarb based the character “Sarah Samet” in The Tree of Life. Ulianover rarely left her apartment, due to her poor health.
Prof. Goldie Morgentaler has created a page about the poet Simḥah Bunam Szajewicz (Simkha-Bunim Shayevitch) (1907-1944) in the website dedicated to Chava Rosenfarb. Read about him by clicking here.
Other painters and sculptors in the Łódź ghetto included:
Icyk Majer (Vincent) Brauner,
Erna Brzezinska,
Pola Dancygier,
Fajga Edelbaum,
David Friedmann (later Friedman), a painter, born in Mährisch Ostrau, Austro-Hungary (today Ostrava , Czech Republic ) in 1893, who lived for many years in Berlin; he created numerous illustrations for the albums produced by the ghetto’s “Statistical Department” on the various work departments, (more at http://www.chgs.umn.edu/museum/responses/friedmann/)
M. Frydenzon,
Sura-B. Gliksman,
Mendel Grosman, known principally as a photographer,
Mojzesz Gurewicz,
Zdenek Holub, a Czech-Jewish artist who illustrated albums,
Nachman Kaufman,
Józef Kowner, whose work was the center of a major exhibition that was also an important social event in the ghetto, amply documented in photographs,
Jakób Lesman,
Luba Lurie,
Aniela Menkesowa,
Szymon Szerman,
Alter Pinkas Szwarc,
Hersz Tsvi Szylis,
Maurycy Trębacz.
A male artist named Ryder is also mentioned in Yad Vashem’s photo archives.
Brauner (born in 1887), who lived during the ghetto period at Bierstrasse / Piwna 21 (just a few streets away from Rybna 14A) created three water-color portraits of Lejzerowicz that have survived in the Jewish Historical Institute’s collections in Warsaw. Lejzerowicz also did a drawing of Brauner, also conserved in the Jewish Historical Institute (ZIH A-888/58).
Szmul Rozensztajn’s list - from the Łódź state archives (documents PL_39_278_L19492_47 and PL_39_278_L19492_48), made available by Łódź-based researcher Michal Latosinski:
Rozensztajn was Rumkowski’s assistant. Dated August 1, 1944 - shortly before the ghetto’s dissolution - a two-page document, written in German, lists the artistic elite of the ghetto for Rumkowski in a special request for food rations. The document is divided into a number of sections:
1. Writers in Yiddish
2. Writers in other languages
3. Painters
4. “Artistes”
5. Musicians
Lejzerowicz is listed principally as a painter, but also as a writer in Yiddish. Chava Rosenfarb is listed as number 16 in the alphabetical list of Yiddish writers. Hilde Stern, most likely the only writer in German, is listed as number 8 in the list of writers in other languages. The other writers listed probably wrote in Polish or Russian.
Sources:
Hilda Stern Cohen, Genagelt ist meine Zunge: Lyrik und Prosa einer Holocaust-Überlebenden. Frankfurt/
Main: Bergauf-Verlag, 2003.
--- Words that Burn Within Me: Faith, Values, Survival. Washington, DC: Dryad Press, 2008.
Chava Rosenfarb, The Tree of Life [Boym fun lebn]: A Trilogy of Life in the Lodz Ghetto. Madison,
Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press / Terrace Books, 1985.
Paweł Spodenkiewicz, The Missing District: People and Places of Jewish Łódź. Łódź: Wydawnictwo
HOBO Press, 2007.
Yad Vashem (note by Esther Fisher about a photograph of the painter Hersz Tsvi Szylis)
http://207.232.26.141/D2/LODZ/CD6/4_108_1.JPG
