Metadata: Samuel Haskin. Personal fonds
Collection
- Country:
- Latvia
- Holding institution:
- National Library of Latvia
- Holding institution (official language):
- Latvijas Nacionālā Bibliotēka
- Postal address:
- Mūkusalas iela 3, Rīga, LV-1423
- Phone number:
- +371 6780 6100
- Web address:
- www.lnb.lv
- Email:
- lnb@lnb.lv
- Reference number:
- RXA88
- Title:
- Samuel Haskin. Personal fonds
- Title (official language):
- Samuils Haskins. Personīgais fonds
- Creator/accumulator:
- Haskin, Samuel
- Date(s):
- 1920/1974
- Language:
- Russian
- Latvian
- Yiddish
- German
- Extent:
- 38 files
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Photographic images
- Graphic material
- Physical condition:
- good
- Scope and content:
- The personal fonds of the cartoonist Samuel Haskin contains personal documents, clippings, catalogues, albums, essays, speeches, periodicals, biographical materials, memoirs, letters, photos, pictures, drawings, cartoons, oil paintings, and other objects. Some of the materials from the fonds are of Jewish interest. As an artist, Haskin actively collaborated with the Jewish press of the 1930s and his political cartoons were published in the left wing Yiddish press. Editions of Ashmodai, Naier Fraitik, Morgn and others with his drawings are held in this fonds. Another part of Haskin’s cartoons published in the Jewish press has been photocopied and preserved. In 1938, Haskin was arrested by the NKVD in Moscow. After returning to Riga in 1947 he continued to work as an artist. His collection of post-war materials contains letters, photographs and other documents of Haskin, his friends and colleagues, such as the artist Bernhard Danengirsh, the famous Riga doctor Mikhail Joffe, the editor of the satirical magazine Ashmodai, Hertz Aktsin, comrade in anti-fascist underground of the 1930s Shmuel Timenchik, and co-worker in the journal "Nord Ost" Mira Krupnikova. B Danengirsch writes in his description of his friend Haskin: “Haskin understood perfectly well that it was necessary to fight against nationalist demagogy, first of all, his own Jewish bourgeoisie, and he did this in the series of linocuts "The Chosen People", in which he exposed the exploitation of capitalists, contrasting them with the unity of the working people of all nationalities." This collection of documents will be of interest to researchers studying the political, cultural and social life of the Jewish community in Latvia in the pre-war and post-war period. This collection is valuable for Yiddish cultural historians, political art researchers, as well as for researchers studying the history of Jews who became victims of Stalinist repressions.
- Archival history:
- Unknown
- Administrative/biographical history:
- Samuel Haskin (1909-1974) was a cartoonist. His father was a lumberjack, his mother a dressmaker. Haskin painted from early childhood. In the 1930s, his political cartoons were published in the Yiddish press. In his 1959 autobiography, Haskin talks about how in 1926 he became a member of the illegal Komsomol organisation in Latvia. He was arrested five times for revolutionary activity. From 1926 he created about 2,000 drawings, linocuts, posters, exhibitions and the like for the underground and legal press of the Communist Party of Latvia. In 1935-1938 he studied in Moscow at the Institute of Graphics. In 1938, Haskin was arrested by the NKVD and was a prisoner in a Gulag until 1947. While imprisoned in the Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, he made an album with 600 drawings on medical topics (now kept at the Academy of Medical Sciences in Moscow). Haskin returned to Riga in 1947 as an invalid; he continued to draw cartoons for the Latvian press, namely the newspapers Tsinya (“Cīņa”), Padomyu Yaunatne (“Padomju Jaunatne”), “Literatūra un Māksla”, and the satirical journal “Dadzis”. Haskin was a member of the Latvian Union of Artists and held numerous exhibitions.
- Access points: locations:
- Riga
- Yerusha Network member:
- Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People
- Author of the description:
- Jana Makarova
