KHAYIM DOMB

KHAYIM DOMB (b. 1912)

            He was born in Bielsk (Bielsk Podlaski), Poland.  He studied in religious elementary school, and over the years 1917-1926 in a Jewish school.  From 1926 to 1930, he was a student in the Vilna Jewish Teachers’ Seminary, and later in Shmuel Tsharno’s Seminary.  At that time he belonged to the group Fraye shriftn (Free writings), a free socialist circle, and he was active in circles concerned with individual psychology.  In 1932 he graduated from the Hebrew-Polish Teachers’ Seminary of Dr. Sh. Y. Tsharno in Vilna.  Due to chicanery on the part of the Polish regime, in 1934 he was working illegally as a teacher in the Vilna special Jewish school for intellectually challenged children, run by Vite Levin.  He later worked as a teacher in Jewish schools in Bielsk, Vilna, and Ignalina.  In 1938 he moved to Warsaw.  He worked there as a teacher in Jewish schools, and he also taught Yiddish to a group of assimilated Jews.  He also wrote a report for YIVO.  From an accidentally saved copy, this report was published in Yivo-bleter (Pages from YIVO) (New York) (January-February 1941), pp. 88-92.  In September 1936 he was selected in the second round to be a YIVO research student and he wrote a study on the topic of “Yerushedikeyt un svive vi sibes fun hintershtalikeyt bay kinder” (Heredity and environment as reasons for backwardness in children).  It was published in Yivo-bleter 12.4-5 (Vilna), pp. 409-19.  His poem “Greber lid” (Miner’s song) appeared in Unzer hofenung (Our hope), edited by Y. M. Vaysenberg, in Warsaw (December 1, 1926).  He was killed by the Nazis.

Sources: N. Berg, in Unzer tog (Vilna) (June 1937); Yivo-bleter (New York) 26 (1945), in the section “Yizker” (Remembrance); L. Bayon, in Lerer yizker-bukh (Remembrance book for teachers) (New York, 1954), pp. 123-24, 229.