Bursztyn, Michal
BURSZTYN, MICHAL
BURSZTYN, MICHAL (1897–1945), Yiddish novelist. Bursztyn, who was born in Blonie, left home for Warsaw at age 12, studied in Polish schools, and then at the university. A teacher of history and literature, he was among the pioneers of Jewish shtetl-tourism in Poland during the 1930s. He contributed articles and short stories to various Yiddish journals. His first novel, Iber di Khurves fun Ployne ("On Ployne's Ruins," 1931), a realistic depiction of the difficulties of Polish-Jewish coexistence in independent Poland, won him immediate recognition. This work, his two later novels, Goyrl ("Destiny," 1936) and Bay di Taykhn fun Mazovye ("By the Rivers of Mazovia," 1937), and his stories collected in Broyt mit Zalts ("Bread and Salt," 1939) vividly chronicle all levels of Jewish society in Poland until the Holocaust. In September 1939 Bursztyn escaped to the Soviet territories. Trapped in the Kovno ghetto in 1941, he continued writing. He died in March 1945 at Dachau concentration camp.
bibliography:
M. Ravitch, Mayn Leksikon, 1 (1945), 40–42; M. Yellin, in: Kiddush ha-Shem, ed. S. Niger (1948), 407–9; lnyl, 1 (1956), 273–5; add. bibliography: Ch Shmeruk, in: J. Reinharz (ed.), Living with Antisemitism (1987), 275–95.
[Melech Ravitch]