Marmor, Kalman
MARMOR, KALMAN
MARMOR, KALMAN (Ẓevi ; 1879–1956), Yiddish scholar and activist. Born in Mishagola, near Vilna, he immigrated to Switzerland in 1899, where he studied at the universities of Freiburg and Berne, before settling in the U.S. in 1906. He joined the Po'alei Zion, co-founded the World Union of Po'alei Zion, and became the editor of its weekly, Der Yidisher Kemfer. In 1914 he joined the American Socialist Party and in 1919 the American Labor Alliance, which became the Workers Party and later the Communist Party. Marmor began his literary career in 1901 in Der Yidisher Arbeter, published by the Bund, and contributed to Yiddish periodicals in Europe and the U.S. In 1922 he joined the New York Yiddish Communist daily Morgen Frayhayt and remained a contributor until his death.
From 1933 to 1936, he lived in Kiev, working in the Institute for Jewish Studies of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, where he prepared editions of the works of Aaron *Liebermann, Joseph *Bovshover, and David *Edelstadt. His monograph on Liebermann, as well as the collection of Liebermann's works which he annotated and translated into Yiddish, were lost when the Institute was liquidated by the Soviet government in 1936. As a U.S. citizen, Marmor was freed, having rescued Liebermann's letters, which were later published in New York. The first two volumes of his edition of the works of David Edelstadt, written from an extreme party perspective, were published in Moscow in 1935. The manuscript of the third volume found its way to the yivo Institute in New York. In his long career Marmor was a committed Zionist, Po'alei-Zionist, Socialist, and Communist, an expert on the history of Yiddish and Hebrew literature, on Jewish, Arabic, and Greek philosophy, and on the history of socialist and revolutionary movements; he was a productive writer, an able researcher and collector of historical material. His publications include Der Onhoyb fun der Yidisher Literatur in Amerike (1944), Dovid Edelshtat (1950), Yoysef Bovshover (1952), Yankev Gordin (1953), his autobiography, Mayn Lebns-Geshikhte (2 vols., 1959), and his 10-volume edition of the complete works of Morris Winchevsky (1927).
bibliography:
Rejzen, Leksikon, 2 (1927), 491–500; lnyl, 6 (1965), 113–9; A. Pomerantz, Di Sovetishe Harugey Malkhus (1962), 360–85. add. bibliography: G.G. Branover (ed.), Rossiĭskaia evreĭskaia entsiklopediia, 2 (1995), 252.
[Elias Schulman /
Jerold C. Frakes (2nd ed.)]