Zosa Szajkowski

Zosa Szajkowski (born Yehoshua or Shayke Frydman) (10 January 1911, Zaręby, Poland – 26 September 1978, New York) was an American historian born in Russian Partition of Poland, whose work is important in Jewish historiography.

Biography

Zosa Szajkowski was born on 10 January 1911, at Zaręby Kościelne (in Yiddish, Zaromb), a small town in Russian Partition, in the region of Białystok. He spent his childhood there, attending a traditional Jewish cheder, as well as a public Jewish elementary school; later he attended a public Jewish secondary school in Warsaw for three years.

In 1927, at the age of 16, Szajkowski moved to Paris, joining two brothers and a sister who were already living there. While supporting himself with various odd jobs, he pursued a career as a writer; by 1934 he was working as a journalist for '' Naye Prese'', Paris's Yiddish-language communist daily.

An autodidact who had never studied at a university, Szajkowski aspired to write scholarly studies in Jewish history. Around 1935 he met Elias Tcherikower and his wife Riva, who were then residing in Paris, and became a regular visitor at their Paris apartment, a gathering place for Yiddish-speaking intellectuals. Over the course of time Tcherikower, who headed the historical section of YIVO, a scholarly Jewish research institute headquartered in Vilnius, became a mentor to Szajkowski in his scholarly endeavors. In 1936 and 1937, Szajkowski published at his own expense two books of his essays on historical topics, one about the history of the Yiddish-speaking immigrant community in France and the other about the history of the Jewish labor movement there.

In ''The New York Sun'', William Meyers gives, in 2007, a portrait of Szajkowski:

Professor Jonathan Sarna from Brandeis University wrote in 2006 the following about Zosa Szajkowski:

The death of Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg this week called to mind a course I took as a Brandeis undergraduate with the legendary YIVO Institute for Jewish Research scholar, Zosa Szajkowski. Szajkowski's idea of teaching was to talk about whatever was on his mind that day, and for a good portion of the course what was on his mind was his ex-friend Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg. Just a few years before, Rabbi Hertzberg's brilliant book entitled ''The French Enlightenment and the Jews'' (1968) had appeared, and Szajkowski charged that much of Rabbi Hertzberg's research was cribbed from his articles. "I am going to sue him," he fumed.

The charge was absurd. Szajkowski, an autodidact whose English was weak, could never have written the powerful thesis-driven book that Rabbi Hertzberg produced. But this did not prevent the two hard-headed ex-friends from having an acrimonious quarrel. Nevertheless, a few years later, when Szajkowski died suddenly, it was Rabbi Hertzberg who conducted his funeral and eulogized him. That was his way.

Archive transfer

In an article published in 2001, in the ''Archives juives'', on the topic of "La reconstruction de la bibliothèque de l'AIU (Alliance Israélite Universelle), 1945–1955 he rebuilding of the Library of the AIU (Alliance Israélite Universelle), 1945–1955" Jean-Claude Kuperminc writes:

Before concluding, there remains to mention a particular aspect of these moving operations of the collections of Jewish Libraries. After the Nazi spoliations, we had to be submitted to non pleasant events involving some American Jewish Institutions. The case of thefts perpetrated by the historian Zosa Szajkowski is now known. It can be specified that Szajkowski was caught stealing in the rooms of the Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire from (Strasbourg) and condemned for theft in 1963. During the years 1949–1950, Szajkowski, who also called himself Frydman, used the Library of the Alliance and important documents then disappeared. In May 1950, the "American Friends" of the AIU informed the Parisian headquarters that books belonging to the AIU had been sold by Szajkowski to the New York Public Library and to the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) of New York.

In an article on the history of the Synagogue of Fontainebleau, published in February 2010, Frédéric Viey writes in conclusion:

Proud of its past, the Jewish Community of Fontainebleau can commemorate in 2010 without any fuss its 230 years of existence since one can find a Jewish presence in that city even prior to 1780. Indeed, even if Zosa Sjajkowski has embezzled a certain number of documents from the Archives Nationales and that he establishes the date of the settling of Jews in Fontainebleau in August 1795, he wasn't able to consult all the documents concerning the Jewish Community, in particular the register of births, marriages and deaths of that city.

There is a mention of suspicion or of documented thefts by Zosa Szajkowski at the following locales:

* Library of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, in Paris, 1949–1950
* Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire (Strasbourg), 1963
* Archives Nationales, in Paris

Works by Szajkowski

The list of publications by Szajkowski, chronologically, is as follows (some are out-of-print):
* 1942 ''How the mass migration to America began''
* 1944 ''The decline and fall of Provençal Jewry''
* 1946 ''The growth of the Jewish population of France''
* 1947 ''Internal conflicts in French Jewry at the time of the revolution of 1848''
* 1947 ''The organisation of the "UGIF" in Nazi-occupied France''
* 1948 ''Dos loshn fun di Yidn in di arba' kehiles fun Komta-Venessen''
* 1948 ''The language of the Jews in the four communities of Comtat Venaissin''
* 1948 ''Socialists and radicals in the development of antisemitism in Algeria (1884–1900)''
* 1948 ''Antisemitizm in der Frantseyzisher arbeter-bavegung''
* 1951 ''Jewish emigration policy of the Rumanian "exodus", 1899–1903''
* 1952 Emigration to America or reconstruction in Europe''
* 1953 ''Agricultural credit and Napoleon's anti-Jewish decrees''
* 1954 ''The economic status of the Jews in Alsace, Metz and Lorraine (1648–1789)
* 1954 ''Poverty and social welfare among French Jews (1800–1880)''
* 1955 ''The Comtadin Jews and the annexation of the Papal province by France, 1789–1791''
* 1955 ''Relations among Sephardim, Ashkenazim and Avignonese Jews in France: From the 16th to the 20th centuries''
* 1956 ''The European aspect of the American-Russian passport question''
* 1956 ''ha-Komunah ha-Parsa'it veha-Yehudim''
* 1956 ''Jewish emigration from Bordeaux during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries''
* 1956 ''Protestants and Jews of France in fight for emancipation, 1789–1791''
* 1957 ''French Jews in the Armed Forces during the revolution of 1789''
* 1958 ''Glimpses on the history of Jews in occupied France''
* 1958 ''The reform of the état-civil of the French Jews during the Revolution of 1789''
* 1959 ''Autonomy and communal Jewish debts during the French Revolution of 1789''
* 1959 ''The emancipation of Jews during the French Revolution: A bibliography of books, pamphlets and printed documents, 1789–1800''
* 1959 ''Notes on the demography of the Sephardim in France''
* 1960 ''Bibliography of Jewish periodicals in Belgium, 1841–1959''
* 1960 ''Jewish diplomacy: Notes on the occasion of the centenary of the Alliance Israélite Universelle''
* 1962 ''Catalogue of the exhibition, Morris Rosenfeld (1862–1923) and his time''
* 1962 ''Franco-Judaica: An analytical Bibliography of Books, Pamphlets, Decrees, Briefs''
* 1962 ''Mazarinades of Jewish interest''
* 1966 ''Analytical Franco-Jewish gazetteer, 1939–1945, with an introd. to some problems in writing the history of the Jews in France during World War 2''
* 1970 ''One hundred years of the Yiddish press in America, 1870–1970: Catalogue of the exhibition''
* 1971 or 1972 ''Index of articles relative to Jewish history and literature published in periodicals from 1665 to 1900''
* 1972 ''The attitude of American Jews to World War I, The Russian Revolution of 1917, and Communism (1914–1945)''
* 1974 ''The impact of the 1919–1920 Red Scare in America''
* 1975 ''Jews and the French Legion''
* 1976 ''An Illustrated Sourcebook on the Holocaust''
* 1977 ''Kolchak, Jews, and the American intervention in Northern Russia and Siberia, 1918–1920''
* 1977 ''The mirage of American Jewish aid in Soviet Russia, 1917–1939''
* 1980 ''An illustrated sourcebook of Russian antisemitism, 1881–1978''

Awards

* 1966: National Jewish Book Award, in the collection of rare books and manuscripts and the Zosa Szajkowski Collection at the YIVO, part of the Center for Jewish History.Zosa Szajkowski Collection
at the YIVO Institute

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Szajkowski, Zosa
1911 births
1978 deaths
American people of Polish-Jewish descent
Writers on Zionism
Jewish American historians
Historians of Jews and Judaism
Soldiers of the French Foreign Legion
History of YIVO
20th-century American historians
Polish emigrants to the United States
20th-century American male writers
American male non-fiction writers
20th-century American Jews