Rosental Esther & Nison

Esther Rosenthal-Shneiderman (1896 Częstochowa – 1989 Jerusalem) was a Yiddish educator and journalist. In the early 1930s, in Birobidzhan, she was an editor of Yiddish children’s periodicals — Yunger shloger (Young Shock Worker, 1931) and Oktyaberl (Child of the October Revolution, 1932) - and an author or co-author of several textbooks for Soviet Yiddish schools. Esther Rosenthal-Shneiderman received her primary education at a Jewish public school, studied in a Polish gymnasium, and in 1918 enrolled at Warsaw University. She worked as a teacher at the Central Yiddish School Organization (TSYSHO), and was active in the Polish Communist movement. In 1926 she moved to the Soviet Union and soon headed the Communist Party organization at the Kiev-based Yiddish academic center – The Institute for Jewish Proletarian Culture (IJPC). She was appointed a research fellow at the institute’s Pedagogical Section and also lectured in the Kiev Pedagogical Institute. In 1934 she followed her close friend and the director of IJPC, Josef Liberberg, to Birobidzhan. There she worked in the Pedagogical College, and met her future husband Nison Rosenthal. In 1938, she moved to Nalchik, where she worked as a teacher of mathematics, and later as a lecturer in the Kabardino-Balkarian State Pedagogical Institute. After World War II Esther and Nison married, and lived in Kiev. In 1958 they repatriated to Poland, and moved to Israel in 1962. In Jerusalem, Esther Rosenthal-Shneiderman was affiliated with the Hebrew University’s Center for Research and Documentation of East European Jewry. Nison Rosenthal (1898 Vilnius – 1970 Jerusalem) was a Jewish educator, poet, and publicist in Lithuania. In the 1920s he worked as a teacher in Jewish schools in various Lithuanian towns. In the late 1920s he was escaped communist persecution and moved to Riga, where worked as a teacher at a Jewish special school until 1934. In 1935, he came to the Soviet Union as a political emigré, and settled in Birobidzhan. The private collection of Esther Rosenthal-Shneiderman and Nison Rosenthal contain their personal documents and materials related to their activities as educators, public activists and writers. The collection includes: memories; correspondence with friends, relatives, cultural activists, etc.; private photos of the family and various historical photos; Esther’s and Nison’s short biographies, articles, notes and chapters from books; documents about Jewish cultural life in the Ukraine during late 1920s - the first half of the 1930s -- Read more