YISROEL-MORTKHE (ISRAEL) BIDERMAN

YISROEL-MORTKHE (ISRAEL) BIDERMAN (November 28, 1911-April 19, 1973).

     Born in Vlotslavek (Włocławek), Poland, he studied in a Mizrachi school as well as in a Jewish public high school.  He graduated from Warsaw University with a Master degree in Humanistic Knowledge, as well as from the Warsaw Judaic Institute.  While still in high school, he began publishing correspondence pieces in the Hebrew newspapers.  Later he wrote for current affairs publications, such as: Haynt (Today) and Undzer expres (Our express).  He was secretary for the weekly Undzer front (Our front), and a contributor to Tsiyonistisher leksikon (Zionist handbook) and to a number of Hebrew publications as well.  Over the years 1935-1939, he served as a teacher in the Jewish high school in Vlotslavek and editor of Vlotslavker shtime (Voice of Vlotslavek).  With the eruption of WWII, he turned up in the Soviet Union and was sent to the forests of the Archangelsk region.  He returned to Poland in 1946, lived for a time in Wrocław, Lower Silesia.  He edited the weekly Ichud (Unity) and Nowy życie (New life), Polish-language organ of the Jewish Committee, standing at the pinnacle of the Central Council of Communities, and he worked in the educational field.  In 1949 he emigrated to the United States, and there he served as director of the school committee of the Zionist workers’ committee and as consultant for the Jewish educational committee in New York.  He published in Yidisher kemfer (Jewish fighter), Yidishe dertsiung (Jewish education), Kinder-zhurnal (Children’s magazine), and Argentiner beymelekh (Argentine trees).  He translated into Yiddish contemporary Hebrew poetry, and he put out holiday publications for school children and adults.  He was the author of: Oyfshtand fun di yidn in di getos (Uprising of the Jews in the ghettos) (New York, 1957), 26 pp.; Mayer Balaban: Historian of Polish Jewry (New York, 1976), xxv, 334 pp.  He also edited Pinkes gostinin (Records of Gostynin) (New York, 1960).  One pseudonym he used was “Y. Morbid.”  He was living in New York where he died.

[N.B. Biderman went on to earn a Ph.D. from New York University and to serve in numerous positions in the Zionist movement in New York and elsewhere.]

[Addition information from: Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 80.]