Museum of the Yiddish Theatre

Visit

Exhibitions

Collections

Research

Opportunities

About the Museum

Site Map

Links

Born 2 March 1892 in Lodz, Poland into a family of small businessmen. Studied in a religious elementary school (cheder) and in a Talmud Torah. Until World War I he worked as a cloth cutter in a large Jewish textile firm. As an active member in the Po’ale Zion, he worked in the Yiddish section of the library to support education. At the time of the German Occupation in World War I, he started reporting for the “Lodzer folksblat,” and afterwards published sketches in the “Naye folksblat,” for which he became (together with Lazar Fuchs and Moshe Broderzon) one of the editors. In 1917 he published a collection of his war sketches, “War Time,” under the name “Ben-Khanokh.” Under that penname, and also as “A Sharp Tongue” and as “A Theatre Person,” he wrote reviews of Yiddish theatre, to which he was closely drawn, and he also published a few one-act plays, as well as the three-act play, “She Keeps on Playing” (1936).  B. also introduced in his newspaper a novel, “A Weaver’s Courtyard,” and published in 1921 the “Yiddish Stock Exchange,” and in 1925 the comic weekly, “The Child Prodigy.” B. was also the Lodz correspondent for the Warsaw newspaper “Moment,” and he had some letters published in the New York “Forward.” Khayim-Leib Fuks writes: “Khayim Yankl Bezhustovski also began to write in the ‘Lodzer folksblat’ and was one of the later editors of “Di naye folksblat.' In addition to chronicling and reporting, he also published pictures of Lodz characters and humorous sketches under the name of ‘Ben-Khanokh.’ Under that pen name he brought out his first book ‘Wartime,” pictures of Lodz under the German Occupation, where he showed, as in a crooked mirror, the German (‘Willhellmish’) ‘order.’ Bezhustovski also published theatre reviews under the name ‘A Sharp Tongue.'

His play, ‘She Plays On,' is from a later period in his creation. He also published some one-act plays to present to the drama critics.

His life was cut off by the German murderers. More than a little blame, though not a direct one, also goes to the “true believers” of  the Bialystok Literary Union at the beginning of 1940 , where he, together with Moshe Broderzon, was thrown out of the “Yevsektsia” (Official Soviet Jewish Cultural Organization), which spread the word that he and Broderzon were enemies of the working classes and  were editors of the Yiddish-bourgeois newspaper, the leftist-Zionist Po’ale Zion, and that  he was, for a long time, active in the Po’ale Zion. He would not have distanced himself from the Soviets, if it had not been for this denunciation made against him. He had sensed that they planned to completely obliterate him.

In a note from 31 July 1941, Herman Kruk’s “Diary of the Vilna Ghetto,” states: “Before daybreak Lithuanians came to the residence of Khayim-Yankl Bezhustovski, the refugee from Lodz (the former editor of the “Lodzer folksblat”)… (27Stefanska), supposedly looking for a particular Communist. Since they didn’t find the Communist, while there they picked up the aforementioned B. (The editor of the daily mentions that, according to the “Lexicon of New Yiddish Literature,” “B. was sent to Ponar in November 1941. But from Kruk’s notes it is clear that this happened a few months earlier.”)

About this last and tragic episode of the death of Bezhustovski and his family, Shmerke Kaczerginski writes, in his book “Khurbn Vilne” (Destruction of Vilna), that “he fled from occupied Lodz and remained in Vilna.” At first when it was a ghetto, he was able to work and had gotten a pass, [which was] stamped as a “craftsman,” which served initially as a protective pass, that he was not to be sent to Ponar…  On a day in November 1941 they rounded up everyone with that type of pass and took them to the city gate to check the authenticity of their passes. However, the Germans imprisoned all of them, and from there sent them to Ponar. With Bezhustovski was his son Erik. Remaining in the ghetto was Bezhustovski’s wife Felya, who had tried to survive. In the final liquidation of the ghetto, when people were sent to the left or right (23, 24 Sept 1943), she was sent to the left.”

• Zalmen Reisen --  “Lexicon of Jewish Vilna,"1926, Vol. 1, p. 439.

• “Lexicon of the New Yiddish Literature," N.Y., 1956, Vol. 1, p.275.

• Shmerke Kaczerginski -- “The Destruction of Vilna," N.Y., 1947, p.181.

• Khayim-Leib Fuks -- “Yiddish Literature of Lodz," N.Y., 1957, Vol. 3, pp 207, 208, 225, 226, 249.

• Herman Kruk -- “Diary of the Vilna Ghetto,” 1961, p. 27.