SHAYE-OSHER YOLLES

SHAYE-OSHER YOLLES (1893-January 1944)

            He was born in Nayshtot, eastern Galicia, where his father was the rabbi.  He, too, received rabbinical ordination and for many years was rabbi in Stryj.  He was an active leader of “Tseire agudat yisrael” (Agudat Yisrael youth) in Galicia.  He published articles in the Orthodox periodicals: Der yud (The Jew), Dos yudishe togblat (The Jewish daily newspaper), Ortodoksishe yugend-bleter (Orthodox youth pages), and Darkenu (Our way) in Warsaw; Yudishe arbayter-shtime (Voice of Jewish labor) and Beys yankev-zhurnal (Beys-yankev journal) in Lodz; Dos yudishe vort (The Jewish word) in Cracow; Dos vort (The word) in Vilna; and elsewhere.  He was especially well known in 1926 for his newspaper debate with “Reb Tsayir” over the question of revising religious law and rites.  When the Russians seized eastern Galicia in 1939, he organized a relief action for the Jewish refugees.  When the Nazis took Stryj, he hid in a bunker until 1944, when around Hanukkah he was killed among the last Jews in Stryj.

Sources: Biblyografishe yorbikher fun yivo (Bibliographic yearbooks from YIVO) (Warsaw, 1928), see index; Dr. H. Zaydman, in Ela ezkera (These I remember), vol. 3 (New York, 1961), pp. 172-77; information from the poet Yisroel Emyot in Rochester, New York.

Khayim Leyb Fuks