Zalek Kalb Beller archives

Collection description

Scope and content:: This fonds contains personal documents, correspondence, typescripts, hand written and typed notes, correspondence with his editor, press clippings and caricatures of the writer Zalek Kalb Beller. We notably find the typescript of his novels "Les Quatre Guerres des frères Naftali" and "Le Miracle des Hosties Sanglantes".

Administrative/biographical history:: Zalek Kalb Beller was born in Grodiszko, Poland in 1910. He emigrated to Antwerp in 1928. Apart from his activity as a fourreur (fur worker), he was active in the communist youth movement and later the Belgian communist party; the party tasked him with creating Einheit, on the model of the Antwerp sport club JASK. He survived the Second World War by taking refuge in the south of France and Switzerland. Having returned to Belgium in 1945, he published in the Naïe Presse and the Arbeter Chtimme, wrote an autobiographical account and other works. He died in Brussels in 1990. (J.-P. Schreiber, "Beller, Zalek Kalb", in J.-P. Schreiber, Dictionnaire biographique des Juifs de Belgique. Figures du judaïsme belge, XIXe-XXe siècles, Bruxelles, De Boeck, 2002, p. 46.)

Subject terms:: Correspondence; Jewish languages; Jewish languages--Yiddish; Literature; Literature--Novels, poetry, and plays; Literature--Writers, poets, and playwrights; Personal records

Access, restrictions:: Access requires the authorisation of the archivist of the Jewish Museum of Belgium.