YITSKHOK-AYZIK BLIND

YITSKHOK-AYZIK BLIND (1866-August 8, 1947)

Born in Lemberg, Galicia, into a family of laborers, he received a traditional education.  He became a worker while still young and stood with the Polish socialist movement.  In 1905 he belonged to a group which broke away from the Polish Socialist Party (Polska Partia Socjalistyczna) and helped to found the Jewish Socialist Party (J. P. S.) in Galicia.  He was in Budapest in 1919 where he was active in the revolution of Béla Kun, but later returned to Galicia and from there went on to join his children—Yiddish actors—in Argentina.  He began writing in Sotsyal-demokrat (Social democrat) in Warsaw (1907-1910)—these were correspondence pieces and short articles on Jewish workers’ lives.  In Warsaw he published in Folks-tsaytung (People’s newspaper) a series of “Zikhroynes” (Memoirs) concerning the history of the Jewish socialist and workers’ movement, as well as the struggle for the Yiddish language in Galicia.  He died in Buenos Aires.

Sources: Y. Bros, in Royte pinkes 2 (Warsaw, 1925), p. 43; Di prese (Buenos Aires) (August 9, 1947); Unzer tsayt (New York) (September 1947).