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Samuel Shneiderman

Samuel Shneiderman was a Jewish journalist and writer in Yiddish and English, known for his reporting on the Spanish Civil War and his writing on the Jews of Poland.

1906 to 1996Yiddish reporting on Spanish Civil WarEditing Mary Berg's ghetto diaryWriting on the Jews of Poland

Born: 15 June 1906, Kazimierz Dolny
Died: 8 October 1996, Ramat Aviv
Occupation: journalist, writer

Samuel Shneiderman was born in 1906 in Kazimierz Dolny

Shneiderman was born on 15 June 1906 in Kazimierz Dolny, near Lublin, to Hana Mandelbaum and Avraham Shneiderman. He attended a religious Jewish elementary school and a Polish middle school.

In 1925 he moved to Warsaw to study literature and journalism. He published two books of Yiddish poems, in 1927 and 1932, translated Polish works into Yiddish and wrote for the Yiddish theater and press.

In 1933 he married Hala (Eileen) Szymin, sister of the photographer David Seymour, and the couple moved to Paris. There he worked as a correspondent for Polish and Yiddish dailies. Between 1936 and 1938 he reported on the Spanish Civil War and published a book of his reports in 1938.

In February 1940 he immigrated with his wife and daughter to the United States and settled in New York. From 1945 he reported from the United Nations, and that year he edited the diary of Mary Berg about the Warsaw Ghetto. He wrote for the Forverts and other Yiddish, English and Hebrew papers.

He visited Poland in 1946 and described it in Between Fear and Hope in 1947. From 1975 to 1978 he was president of the Yiddish PEN club in the United States. He died on 8 October 1996.