HIRSCHHORN, SAMUEL

HIRSCHHORN, SAMUEL (1876–1942), author and journalist, a leader of Polish Jewry between the two world wars. Born in Slonim, Belorussia, of a wealthy and assimilated family, in 1889 he settled in Warsaw, where he completed his studies at a Polish commercial school. The rise of the Jewish nationalist movement awakened Hirschhorn's interest in the problems of the Jews and their culture, and from 1903, when he published the Yiddish pamphlet Vegn Tsionizm (Concerning Zionism), he devoted himself to public and literary activity. In 1916 he participated in the foundation of the *Folkspartei in Poland, and as one of its members was elected to the Warsaw municipal council, and in 1919 as a delegate to the Polish Sejm (parliament).

Hirschhorn contributed to a large number of Jewish periodicals in Polish and Yiddish, including Głos Żydowski, Moriyyah, Ershte Tagblat, and Moment. His Polish work on the history of the Jews in Poland between 1788 and 1914 was published in Warsaw in 1921 (Yid. tr. 1923). From an early age he wrote poems in Polish and translated many Russian and French poems into this language. His translations of Jewish poetry of various periods included an anthology of the poems of Ḥ.N. *Bialik (1917) and a collection of poems by 60 Jewish authors (Anthologia Poezji Żydowskiej, 1921). He pursued his activities until the Nazi occupation and wrote a diary, which has been lost, on life in the Warsaw Ghetto, where he perished.

bibliography:

lnyl, 3 (1960), 159–60 (includes bibliography); Rejzen, Leksikon, 847–9.

[Joseph Kaplan]