SHULMAN, VICTOR

SHULMAN, VICTOR (pseudonym of Israel Ḥayyim Shadov sky ; 1876–1951), organizer and journalist of the *Bund. Born near Kovno, Lithuania, Shulman became in his youth a member of a mixed Zionist and Socialist youth circle in Kovno, of which *Weiter (Devenishsky), and Shemuel *Tchernowitz were also members. In 1899 he joined the Bund and became active in Gomel, helping to affiliate the local social-democratic organization with the Bund. In Gomel he published the periodical Kamf, to which J.H. *Brenner was a contributor. Between 1901 and 1905 he was imprisoned and sent to Siberia. He helped organize the escape of exiled revolutionaries, among them *Trotsky and Dzerzhinski. Between 1905 and 1909 he was alternately active in Vilna and Warsaw, attended the seventh convention of the Bund (Lemberg, 1906), wrote for the press, and was once more imprisoned and exiled. At the end of 1909 he escaped to Switzerland, where he participated in Bund activities. From 1914 he lived in Warsaw, headed the trade unions which had begun to function legally, and acted as secretary of the weekly Lebns Fragen. In independent Poland and throughout the early period of the Nazi occupation, he worked on the Bund daily Folkstsaytung. In 1941 he reached New York via Lithuania with a group of Bund activists. There he engaged in writing and editing, mainly a history of the Jewish press, particularly the Bundist. His works include: Bletlekh Geshikhte fun der Yidisher Arbeiter Bavegung (1929); and, on Jews in Poland during World War i, Yidn in Poyln (1946), 733–890.

bibliography:

Rejzen, Leksikon, 4 (1929), s.v.; I.S. Hertz (ed.), Doyres Bundistn, 1 (1956), 283–97.

[Moshe Mishkinsky]