Born on 15 April 1884 in Grodno, Polish Lithuania, into
a working family. Until age thirteen he learned in a
Talmud Torah, then he learned tailoring, and due to his
activity in the Bundist movement, in 1905 he had to flee
from Russia and settle in Leeds, England, from where he
wrote correspondences for the anarchistic "Arbeyter
fraynd". 1906 -- went away to America. Since 1913 was an
insurance agent in Chicago and contributed in the local
"Idishe arbeyter velt", where on 11 and 18 August 1916
his translation of "In shlakht hoyz" (a scene of the
current war), by Dr. Henry T. Shnitkind.
In 1917 he, together with a
group of Russian political émigrés, went away to
Peterburg and there participated in an organized Jewish
Bolshevik Commissariat in the province. At the end of
1918 he became Commissar of Jewish Matters (enenim)
in the Vitebsk region, and he issued the decree against
farmakhn Jewish khln. In August 1919 he
returned to America, where he published articles about
Soviet Russia, wherein he returned and became there one
of the leaders in the Jewish Bolshevik journalism,
literature critique, and scientific-Jewish work. He
issued several books and edited Bovshover's songs and
collections about Izzy Kharik, geklibene work for
David Edelsthat and several volumes of Winchevsky's
collected works.
O. in 1937 was arrested and
sent away, returning to Moscow, he published in the
Warsaw "Folks shtime" an article about the difficulties
with creating a Jewish press that would have helped the
Bolsheviks in their first years.
Sh. E. from
Chaim-Leyb Fuchs.
-
"Lexicon of the New
Yiddish Literature", New York, 1956, Vol. I, pp.
20-21.
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