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Bidding Information
Lot #
24186
Auction End Date
7/7/2009 12:33:00 PM (mm/dd/yyyy)
Title Information
Title (English)
The Case of Henryk Ehrlich
Title (Hebrew)
and Victor Alter
Author
[First Ed.]
City
London
Publisher
Liberty Publications
Publication Date
1943
Collection Information
Independent Item
This listing is an independent item not part of any collection
Description Information
Physical
Description
First edition. 31, [1] pp., 215:137 mm., light age staining. A very good copy bound as issued.
Detailed
Description
Henryk Ehrlich (Wolf Hersh; 1882–1941), journalist; leader of the Bund in Poland. Erlich was born of a well-to-do family in Lublin; his father was a Hasid who became a maskil and a Hovev Zion. Having joined the Bund in 1903 while a student at the University of Warsaw, Erlich was arrested several times for revolutionary activities and expelled from the university. Later he graduated in law at the University of St. Petersburg, and became a member of the central committee of the Bund. After the 1917 revolution he was a leading figure in the Petrograd (Leningrad) Workers' Soviet. In October 1918 he returned to Warsaw, becoming prominent in the Bund, and editor of the party's Yiddish daily Di Folkstsaytung. He was a member of the Warsaw city council and the kehillah board, and participated in numerous international socialist congresses. On the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 Erlich left Warsaw with his family, and in October was arrested by the Soviet authorities. With Victor Alter he was accused of active subversion and helping Polish intelligence, and was condemned to death; the sentence was later commuted to ten years' hard labor. In September 1941, following the amnesty for all convicted Polish citizens in Soviet Russia, Erlich and Alter were set free. After their release they were approached by Soviet representatives to join a Jewish anti-Fascist committee. However, in the early morning of Dec. 4, 1941, they were again arrested in Kuibyshev. According to a communication of Feb. 23, 1943, from Maxim Litvinov, then Soviet ambassador to the United States, addressed to William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor, Erlich and Alter were executed shortly after their arrest "for hostile activities, including appeals to the Soviet troops to stop bloodshed and immediately conclude peace with Germany." The executions aroused worldwide protests by Labor and Liberal organizations.
Associated Images
2 Images
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Order
Image
Caption
1
2
Listing Classification
Period
20th Century:
Checked
Location
England:
Checked
Subject
History:
Checked
Characteristic
First Editions:
Checked
Language:
English
Manuscript Type
Kind of Judaica
