BUZI GOLDENBERG

BUZI GOLDENBERG (1902-1954)

            He was a Soviet Jewish journalist and critic, born in Berdichev, Ukraine.  Until the liquidation of the left Labor Zionist Party in Ukraine, he was an active member. When he was still a young lad, he volunteered in the army and took part in the fighting of the civil war. In 1921 he returned to his hometown, and in the latter half of the 1920s when the newspaper Di vokh (The week) was founded, he was named its editor. He later moved to the city of Kharkov in Ukraine and became the editor of record for the newspaper Der shtern (The star). In 1936 he went with a large group of journalists, educators, teachers, and other specialists to Birobidzhan, and there he became the editor of the local newspaper Birobidzhaner shtern (Birobidzhan star). He was arrested in 1937 but set free a short time later. In 1940 he was drafted into the military. For a certain amount of time he worked as editor of a Russian front newspaper and published in Eynikeyt (Unity)—in the issue for June 27, 1943, he placed his poem “Mir gedenkn dem kheshbn!” (We remember the score!). He also wrote articles on Communist themes for Emes (Truth) in Moscow.  Concerning the Ukrainian Jewish language conference, he published a piece in Shprakhfront (Language front) 3-4 (Kiev, 1935). Subsequent details remain unknown.

            He was the author of the pamphlets: Tsu vos reynikn dem ratn-aparat (Why purify the Soviet apparatus) (Kharkov: Central Publ., 1929), 24 pp.; Der komintern un di ordntlekhe oyfgabes fun di komparteyen (The Comintern and the respectable publications of the Communist parties) (Kharkov, 1929), 32 pp.; Tsu hilf dem arbdorfkor (Help for the workers’ and peasants’ correspondents) (Kharkov, 1930), 106 pp.  Together with Moyshe Ruzin, he translated Lenin’s Di proletarishe revolutsye un der renegat kautski (The proletarian revolution and the renegade Kautsky [original: Proletarskaya revoliutsiya i renegat’ Kautskiy] (Kharkov-Kiev, 1933), 172 pp. 

Sources: Y. Nusimov, in Eynikeyt (August 5, 1942); B. G., in Eynikeyt (June 27, 1943); T. Gen, in Eynikeyt (October 2, 1945); Y. Rabin, in Folksshtime (Warsaw) 5/61 (1948).

[Additional information from: Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 138; and Chaim Beider, Leksikon fun yidishe shrayber in ratn-farband (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers in the Soviet Union), ed. Boris Sandler and Gennady Estraikh (New York: Congress for Jewish Culture, Inc., 2011), pp.68-69.]