Metadata: Legacy of Gershon Dua-Bogen
Collection
- Country:
- Poland
- Holding institution:
- The Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute
- Holding institution (official language):
- Żydowski Instytut Historyczny im. E. Ringelbluma
- Postal address:
- ul. Tłomackie 3/5, 00-090 Warszawa
- Phone number:
- (+48 22) 827 92 21
- Web address:
- http://www.jhi.pl/
- Email:
- secretary@jhi.pl
- Reference number:
- PL 312/S/329
- Title:
- Legacy of Gershon Dua-Bogen
- Title (official language):
- Spuścizna Gerszona Dua-Bogena
- Creator/accumulator:
- Dua-Bogen, Gershon
- Date(s):
- 1926/1970
- Language:
- Polish
- Yiddish
- German
- Swedish
- Extent:
- 0.5 linear metre (3 boxes; 23 files)
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Photographic images
- Physical condition:
- good
- Scope and content:
-
The collection comprises documents dated between 1926 and 1970, once owned by Gershon Dua-Bogen and his wife and son:
- Personal documents of Gershon Dua-Bogen: a (photocopied) transcript of his birth certificate; CV; French identity card; Association of Jewish Writers and Journalists in Poland membership card.
- Personal documents of Frima Bogen, Gershon’s wife, including: CV; certificates; her account of Adolf Warski; testimony of her stay at a Soviet labour camp, exoneration, application for compensation for the property lost while imprisoned; barrister’s memo on the allocation of 500 roubles to her; outpatient clinic card; Medical and Sanitary Sector Trade Union membership card; worksheet; Social and Cultural Association of Jews (TSKŻ) membership card.
- Personal documents of Jerzy Bogen, Gershon’s son: personal profiles (military- and communist party-related); application to the Higher School of Social Sciences; CV; application for recognition of a military officer’s rank; transcript of a graduation diploma from the Department of History at M. Lomonosov Moscow State University; application for release from duties as Warsaw University Library (BUW) staff member; certificate of labour record with the BUW.
- Gershon Dua-Bogen’s outgoing correspondence: letters to his brother, wife and son (transcripts).
- Incoming correspondence: a memo from the Communist Party of Israel, with an attached copy of a letter sent to the editorial board of Ajnikajt (Unity) on the activity of Estera Wilińska, who was accused of slandering the Party and ‘leftist bias’.
- Documents on Gershon’s trip to see his family in the United States.
- Notes regarding personal matters.
- Fragments of Gershon’s Spanish diary Tracing Heroism, translated from the Yiddish by L. Gejler.
- Gershon’s article entitled In panteon fun nacjonale heldn (In the pantheon of national heroes) published in Fołks Sztyme.
- Itemised lists and bills relating to the sale of Gershon Dua-Bogen’s belongings after his death.
- Invitations to: the commemoration of the first anniversary of Gershon’s death; the celebration of the first anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising; a concert of the orchestra of the Walbrzych-based Jewish Society for Culture and Arts.
- Photographs of Gershon Dua-Bogen, Fruma Bogen and Jerzy Bogen.
- Thanks expressed by G. Dua-Bogen to a youth group who produced his play The New Homeland at the Jewish Youth Club of Marianao (photocopy).
- Index of Gershon Dua-Bogen’s works, the Idysz Buch publishing house – a selection of books in Jewish (Warsaw, January 1960).
- Press articles/clippings on Gershon.
- Collection of Jewish songs: Mir zingen. Lider zamlung. (We Sing: A collection of songs).
- Posters announcing concerts and plays staged in Havana; materials on Cuba.
- Materials on Cuba: Hebraica monthly; Antorcha Juvenil/Jugend-Folk (The Torch of the Young), Organo del Club Juvenil Hebreo de Marianao; ephemerae: (i) re. protest meeting against the Nazi occupation of Poland; (ii) Literarisz-Kinstlerisz Sekcje bajm Ikuf in Hawana [‘Ikuf’ Literary-Artistic Section in Havana].
- Archival history:
- The date on which the documents in question were transferred to the Jewish Historical Institute Archive and the person responsible for the transferral remain unknown.
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
Born 4 May 1892 in Siedlce (then part of the Russian empire) to a petty merchant’s family, Gershon Dua-Bogen received a traditional religious Jewish education. Aged 16 he was employed as a merchant and worker with the leather sector. He joined Poale Zion in 1909. In 1911 he left for the United States where he took a job as a worker and joined the local Socialist party.
On 1 May 1916 Gershon was arrested by German occupation authorities, charged with organising a demonstration and sent to prison in Germany. In 1918 he was delegated to the Warsaw Workers’ Council and acted as secretary to the Warsaw Committee of Poale Zion and labour unions. He travelled to Palestine, where he co-founded the Communist Party of Palestine and was elected its General Secretary. In 1921, in danger of detention by the British authorities, he fled to Poland. He was secretary general of the Central Committee of Poale Zion-Left, delegate of the Communist Party of Palestine at the 4th Congress of the Communist International, secretary to the Central Jewish Bureau (1922) and a member of the Central Professional Department with the Central Committee of the Polish Communist Party (KPP). In 1924 Gershon was sent to the Soviet Union, where he was director of the Central Party School for the Communist Party of Western Belarus. From 1930-35 he worked with the Communist International in the USSR as well as for the Anglo-American Secretariat of Comintern. He joined the Secretariat of the KPP’s Central Committee in 1935. The committee sent him in 1937 to Spain, where he ran the party-related and political activities of the International Brigades’ Base in Albacete. After the KPP was proscribed, he left in 1938 for Paris, where he was a correspondent with the U.S. communist press. In 1942 he returned to Cuba. Back in Poland, from September 1947, he was a member of the Central Committee of the Polish Workers’ Party (PPR) and was subsequently delegated to the Central Committee of Jews in Poland (CKŻP). An outstanding character and personality, he was considered to have great potential as a leader of the Polish Workers’ Party Fraction, but died accidentally in early February 1948, becoming a hero of the Jewish communist movement.
Papers written by Gershon Dua-Bogen can be found also in the collection „Wojna domowa w Hiszpanii” [Civil War in Spain] (file nos. 332/20 i 21) and at the Jewish Historical Institute.
- Access points: persons/families:
- Bogen, Frima
- Bogen, Jerzy
- Dua-Bogen, Gershon
- Finding aids:
-
A catalogue in Polish was compiled in 2010 and is accessible online.
See also:
Grabski A., Działalność komunistów wśród Żydów w Polsce (1944-1949), Warszawa 2004.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute
- Author of the description:
- Agnieszka Reszka; Żydowski Instytut Historyczny im. E. Ringelbluma; 2015
