ROSENTHAL, PAVEL

ROSENTHAL, PAVEL (Pinhas ; pseudonyms: Anman, P. Rol ; 1872–1924), physician and author, a leader of the *Bund. Rosenthal, who was born in Vilna, where his merchant father was both a maskil and a religious Jew, joined clandestine socialist circles when at secondary school and at the University of Kharkov, where he became a Marxist. At the university he organized socialist activity among the Jewish Lithuanian students, was arrested, and expelled. He did not complete his studies until 1898. Rosenthal joined the group of Jewish Social Democrats in Vilna. From 1895 he headed the "Jargon Committee" for the publication and propagation of popular scientific literature in Yiddish among the workers. From the autumn of 1899, he practiced medicine in Bialystok, acting also as leader of the local Bund, and as editor of its organ Bialystoker Arbeter. He attended the third convention of the Bund (1899) and from 1900 served on its central committee. In conjunction with J. *Portnoy at the Bund's fourth convention (Bialystok, 1901), Rosenthal drafted the resolution on the national question. He was the author of the "Manifesto to the Jewish Intelligentsia," which was published in the name of the Bund in three editions. Again imprisoned, Rosenthal was exiled to Siberia between 1902 and 1905. He played a prominent role in the revolt of the exiles in Yakutsk, the "Romanovka," which he described in his book of the same name (Rus., 1924). A member of the editorial board of Veker, the legally authorized organ of the Bund, Rosenthal shared all the vicissitudes of the Bund during the 1905 revolution. He was among the moderates regarding the Bund's return to the Russian Social Democratic Party. During the period of reaction following 1905, he turned his attention to the problems of promoting culture and education for adults. In World War i Rosenthal served at the front. After his discharge at the end of 1917, he was elected to the central committee of the Bund at its eighth convention. Resuming his professional and literary work in Moscow, Kiev, and Petrograd, Rosenthal was authorized to return to Vilna in 1921. Having previously identified with the internationalist wing of the Bund, in Poland he joined the short-lived Polish Social Democratic Bund.

A prolific author, Rosenthal had wide and varied interests. His work on revolutions in Western Europe, Vi Zaynen Forgekumen Revolutsies in Mayrev Oyropa, appeared in 1905. In his Der Kampf far Velthershaft un Velt-Vegn ("The Struggle for World Domination and World Routes," 1924, first published in Russian, 1923), he included a chapter on the general role of the Jews. His articles on the history of the Bund are included in Royter Pinkes, 1 (1921), 45–63; 2 (1924), 5–21.

Rosenthal's wife, anna, née Heller (1872–c. 1940), a dentist, was an early member of the Ḥovevei Zion group of Vilna and was later active in both the "Jargon Committee" and the Bund committee. With her husband, she took part in the revolt of the exiles in Yakutsk ("Romanovka"). She later resumed her Bundist activities. During World War i, Anna was active in the ose and the Red Cross. Between the two world wars, she taught in Vilna in cysho institutions, and was active in yivo. She was a Bundist delegate at the congress of the Socialist International (1931). Her memoirs were published in yivo Historishe Shriftn (vol. 3, 1939). After the occupation of Vilna by the Soviets, she was arrested and died in prison.

bibliography:

Rejzen, Leksikon, 4 (1929), 123–5; lnyl, 1 (1956), 128–31; J. Hertz et al. (eds.), Doyres Bundistn, 1 (1956), 157–92; G. Aronson et al. (eds.), Geshikhte fun Bund, 3 vols. (1960–66), indexes.

[Moshe Mishkinsky]