p. 259. Translated by Berta Kipnis
The proofreaders of Haynt have not chosen to become professional proofreaders by their free will. People of great general and Jewish knowledge, they have in their youth started as authors, poets and novelists, mostly in Hebrew, but also in Yiddish. They dreamed about a literary career, about becoming famous, being recognized by people. The dreams had not materialized.
Awareness that their fate was to remain the whole life on the edge of the writing profession and do a plain technical work left an imprint on the spirit and character of the proofreaders. They did not put their hearts and abilities into the work, obviously suffered from inferiority complexes and envy towards their colleagues, the writers. At the time when they, the proofreaders, were doomed to remain anonymous, the writers achieved publicity. The not realized aspirations made the proofreaders bitter.
The first proofreader in Haynt was Benjamin Kremer (1887-1940). He was invited by his uncle Sh. I. Yatskan as soon as the paper was created in 1908. The previous year Kremer came to Warsaw from his home town Vabolnik (Vabalninkas), in Lithuania, from were Yatskan also originated. At that time Kremer was about twenty and had already published novellas in Hebrew. As a proofreader in Haynt he had also, from time to time, published in Warsaw and in province.
Benjamin Kremer was angry, filled with grudge against the world. Very stubborn, he easily exploded. He carried himself as a man of art, an author, and was not able to reconcile with a thought, that his fate is to remain a proofreader to the end of his life. It hurt him that he had to make a living by correcting typographical errors, “collect maggoty seeds”, as he used to bitterly complain.
When Haynt reached the circulation of 100,000 copies and the format of the paper grew in size, in 1912 Moyshe Haykin (Mojsze Hajkin)
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was hired as a second proofreader. At that time he was not a young man any more (he was born in 1868), and had behind his back an active literary career, but not much recognition. It had not provided him with money. Private lessons were helpful, but it was not enough to make a living for a wife and children.
It is hard to find two people with such different characters and disposition as Benjamin Kremer and Moyshe Haykin. They worked at the same desk, and this was the only thing they had in common. Kremer was explosive, often aggressive, did not hold his temper, did not tolerate any objections and loudly announced his opinion. Haykin was tacit, quiet, unassuming, one may say – submissive. He seldom took part in discussions in the editing office, more listened to what others said, and kept his thoughts to himself, wanted to live in piece with everyone else and was agreeable with all. If he needed anything, he would ask, not boldly, but humbly, modestly. But all this was only on the surface. At home he was a master, led the household with a strong hand and sparingly allocated every “grosh” for the house expenses. In his own way Haykin was a good provider for the family. He brought up well the children and properly married them off. With the neighbors he pretended to be a writer, at Shabath or during a holiday he would sometimes give a sermon in the synagogue “Sheri Zion” on the Pavie street. On the door of his home hang a plate in Polish: “M. Haykin, author and orator”.
Moyshe Haykin had a full head of tar black hair and a moustache with thin ends, curled up a la kaiser Wilhelm II. Haykin dressed himself very modestly, for years he was wearing a suit, a coat, a pair of shoes, and everything was conservative, usually black. Coming to work, he used to take off the coat and the jacket, “so the sleeves would not wear out”. From the desks in the editing office he used to remove the newspapers, collected them at home and sold as wrapping paper. For the takings he used to buy lottery tickets – what if luck plays. In ghetto Haykin was in need. He died of hunger in Warsaw in 1940 at the age of 72.
Haynt was printed weekdays on 6, 8 and 10 pages, and on 12 or 14 pages on the eve of Shabath or holidays, and two proofreaders were not able to do all that work. Moyshe Leyserovitsh (Mojsze Lajzerowic) was hired as a third proofreader.
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A man of completely different cut than the other two proofreaders, he was a scholar, for a while studied philosophy and economy in Switzerland (Szvajc) (in Bern), wrote doctorate dissertations for others, but himself did not have a diploma.
Leyserovitsh was a society man, an active Zionist even since his youth in Brisk. At the time he joined Haynt he was active in the revisionist party and belonged to the group of loyal supporters of Vladimir Zhabotinski. Later, when Zhabotinski started to tear apart the world Zionist organization they went different ways. Leyserovitsh was one of the founders of the “Jewish State party”, which stood in opposition to Zhabotinski, wrote articles in party publications and sometimes in Haynt. In “Today’s news” he popularly explained the objects of concern of the week (see chapter 19).
Leyserovitsh did not have a desire to be a professional proofreader. He often said that he works because he has to make a living. When he was not overtaken by his party matters, he liked to talk, to play chess, to play a game of cards, to tell jokes. He was a cheerful man with a great sense of humor, friendly, enjoyed to kid around. He was well liked in the publishing house.
In the Warsaw ghetto Leyserovitsh was active in cultured and public life.
Precise date and circumstances of his death are unknown. It should have happened in 1943, he was at that time 55 years old. Dr. David Vdovinski, one of the leaders of the revisionists in Poland before the war, tells in his memoirs, which he published in English in New-York “End we are not saved” (p.66, note), that when he was sent to the hard labor camp in Budzin, he received there a letter from a group of friends, which were deported from Warsaw to Maydanek camp. Among those who signed the letter was Moyshe Leyserovitsh. Dr. Vdovinski notices that all those who signed the letter perished in Maydanek.
In summertime, Haynt used to temporarily employ proofreaders in place of those who took vacations. They all were writers, poets or novelists, who did not make a lot of money. One of them was poet Hersh Danielevitsh (Hersz Danielewicz), known under his pen name Hershele.
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Hershele was “a pauper in seven shreds”, a miserable pauper. He made money as a substitute for the proofreaders taking vacations. He insisted that the Literary Association, which provided their unemployed members with such a way to earn money, should send him to substitute specifically to the Haynt, which paid better wages than other newspapers. As a proofreader Hershele was no good, not because he did not like the work or wasn’t fluent, but he just simply was not made for the work. They tolerated him, because it was known that the money he makes summer time should sustain him the whole year.
In the Yiddish literary world in Warsaw in the period between the two word wars Hershele was a tragic figure, a kind of Charlie Chaplin type. One may say, he was the real prototype of the Charlie Chaplin’s hero, the always confused person, the simple good-natured little man, which can not find for himself a place in the complicated chaos of today’s life, where technology can oppress anybody, who is not agile enough to withstand the current of the modern city life. But Hershele did not act on stage: he was really unlucky, naïve, helpless, confused. He even looked as a scared child, the way Charlie Chaplin played his character. His features were small, narrow. He was short, thin, with hands and feet small like a child’s. He had a small, short cut moustache alike Chaplin’s, his bright blue eyes looked trustfully, naïve, but perplexed and scared. He wore old clothes that colleagues-writers have given him; summer and winter he was seen in the same oversized grey tweed jacket, the same worn trousers and same shoes with crooked heels. Everything was too large, not his size.
Hershele had a grudge against the writer’s circle, “How come they do not notice him, let him lie around homeless, without meal, without proper clothing?” It hurt him that nobody had a thought to ask him, whether he is not hungry, has a shelter, a couple of gildens to pay for his poor place to sleep.
Once in the editing office he told more with humor then with sadness how he poured out his gloomy, bitter mood to the writer Segalowicz. In his characteristic broken high voice.
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Hershele told how he described to Segalowicz his needy life with the wife and two kids in a pour little house somewhere in Henrikow, near Warsaw. They had his wedding on the Tlumatske, 13, in the Literary Association building. The writers collected a few dozens of gilden for dowry, with what his wife purchased merchandize and opened a little store, also in Henrikow. The “merchandize” consisted of several bottles of lemonade, a sack of pumpkin seeds, some cheap sweets in a couple of glass jars. It did not take long to lose the “invest-capital”. So Hershele came to the Literary Association to “borrow” fresh “capital” to keep his “business”, but they gave him no more money. His landlord threw the “business” out onto the street and Hershele returned to Warsaw.
Hershele described, so good-naturedly, with a quite half-laughter, as if it was not about his own trouble, how, while pushing in the street an old, half broken baby cart, in which he had his property: a couple books of poems, some writing paper, manuscripts, old shirts, mended socks and a covered with sod gas lamp, of the old fashion lamps with a narrow long glass neck, from the times of king Sobiewski, he met Segalowicz, who was the main matchmaker and a guest at the wedding. Hershele bitterly accused Segalowicz and the Literary Association in malice and stinginess. He complained that if they “landed” him a few gilden his business would survive. “This is what you wanted, and this what you’ve got”, he concluded. In his naivety he believed that the Association had to care for his family, how can be otherwise? But he was bitterly disappointed. The only thing they did for him was to provide him during summer with jobs substituting the vacationing proofreaders. Hershele died of hunger in Warsaw ghetto.
Among the Haynt proofreaders Menakhem-Mendel Hurvits (Menachem-Mendel Hurwic) was, probably, the only one, who took the work of a proofreader seriously, as a profession. For many years he was a proofreader at the Shtibl’s publishing house; meanwhile he wrote poetry in Hebrew.
Menakhem-Mendel Hurvits had professional ambitions and was devoted to his work, he did not make life easy neither for himself nor for the typesetters. He had a sharp eye for an error and seldom missed one. If it happened, it surprised everyone and upset him, and he
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could not forgive it to himself. At work he used a thick pencil, and with his angular fine handwriting of a scribe fixed the errors. His proofs used to be black from the error marks and looked like a map that has markings of every little village. The type setters had a grudge against him, because it happened not once, that they had to re-set a whole article, so many typographic errors Menakhem-Mendl found.
Menakhem-Mendel Hurvits started working at Haynt as a temporary proofreader, and he continued working permanently in a category of a “temporary” proofreader, so to say. In the editing office everyone treated him with respect and addressed him “reb” Menakhem-Mendel.
Hurwits was short, with a wide frame. He had a hoarse voice, like a cantor’s after singing the neile (last prayer on Yom Kippur – B.K.). He did not speak but wheezed, but his mouth never closed. Sipping one after another thick, almost black tea with a lot of sugar, always with a cigarette in his mouth, he endlessly told stories about happenings many years ago in Peterburg, anecdotes about writers and editors, feuds with tsar’s censors. He was a bachelor, the editing office was his home, where he had someone to chat with, and so he kept talking.
Menakhem-Mendel Hurvits perished in the Warsaw ghetto during the large deportation in summer of 1942.
The poet and play-write Alexander Farbo (Etkes) worked as a proofreader in “Today’s News”, but was of an opinion that he deserves to be given a chance to work a few weeks summertime as a substitute at Haynt. Farbo already published his works in Haynt during the World War I. His great sketch “Shma, Isroel” appeared in the issue number 246 on November 29, 1915. Later he also once in a while published in Haynt stories, novellas, poetry. His plays, mostly on social topics, were staged in Warsaw and in province. In the play “The decline of the world” he deals with the problem of women’s emancipation, specifically with the fight of women to liberate themselves from the duties of wives and mothers, to become active and self-supportive. Farbo dealt with this topic more then 40 years ago, before anybody seriously thought about “liberation of women”, which became today a slogan in the struggle.
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Farbo was a quiet man, deep in his own thoughts. A black thin beard ran around his face with sunken pale cheeks. Among the writers in the paper he kept somewhat apart, as if engrossed in mysteries of another world*. A few years before the war Alexander Farbo became pious, did not remove the hat from his head, wrote on religious and mystical topics. He died in Warsaw ghetto.