Portnoy, Jekuthiel
PORTNOY, JEKUTHIEL
PORTNOY, JEKUTHIEL (Noah ; Yuzef ; 1872–1941), one of the pioneers of the *Bund. Portnoy joined a revolutionary circle at the Jewish teachers seminary in Vilna (1888–92). As a teacher in Kovno (Kaunas), he was active among the Jewish workers and in contact with Polish and Lithuanian socialists. Sent to Siberia for revolutionary activities, he managed to escape in 1899 and shortly thereafter joined the central committee of the Bund. He edited its paper, Arbeter Shtime, and directed its organizational matters, settling internal differences of the Bund and lending direction to its program. After 1908 he lived permanently in Warsaw. During World War i he worked for cooperation of the Bund with the Polish socialist parties, but was imprisoned by the Germans. After World War i, in independent Poland, he headed the central committee of the Bund, and in 1925 and 1930 was sent as an emissary to the United States. When the Nazis occupied Poland, he succeeded in escaping to the United States and served as head of the U.S. delegation of the Bund of Poland.
bibliography:
J.S. Hertz (ed.), Doyres Bundistn, 1 (1956), 68–122. add. bibliography: G. Pickhan, "Gegen den Strom," Der allgemeine Juedische Arbeiterbund – Bund in Polen 1918–1939 (2001) (index.)
[Moshe Mishkinsky]