Esther
ESTHER
ESTHER (pseudonym of Malkah Lifschitz , whose names by marriage were Frumkin and Wichmann ; 1880–1943), communist leader, writer, and educator, born in Minsk; one of the most original women in the Jewish labor movement. She acquired a wide Jewish knowledge in childhood, including Hebrew and Bible studies, and studied in St. Petersburg and Berlin. From 1896 Esther was active in Social Democrat circles in Minsk influenced by A. *Liessin, and from 1901 in the *Bund. She edited Bundist periodicals after the 1905 revolution. A representative of the extreme Yiddishists at the *Czernowitz Yiddish Conference, Esther was one of the main promoters in the Bund of Jewish education in Yiddish. She published two books on the subject in Yiddish: "On the Question of the Jewish National School" (1910) and "What Kind of National School Do We Need" (1917). She was imprisoned several times for revolutionary activities and went to Switzerland, where she became a member of the foreign committee of the Bund. After the 1917 February Revolution, she became a member of the central committee of the Bund, and was elected to the Minsk municipal and community councils. She took an active part in founding a network of Yiddish schools, courses for teachers, and other educational institutions. At first violently opposed to the Bolsheviks, she later became a leader of the Kombund, and in May 1921 voted for the self-liquidation of the Bund and joined the Communist Party. From 1921 to 1930 she was a member of the education department of the *Yevsektsiya. With M. *Litvakov she brought out a Yiddish edition of Lenin's writings in eight volumes, and wrote a biography of Lenin in Yiddish (3 eds., 1925–26). She also edited the Moscow Yiddish daily, Emes. She was rector of the Jewish section of the "Communist University of the National Minorities of the West" (kunmz) from 1925 to 1936. In January 1938 she was arrested and imprisoned but refused to admit to the false charges proffered against her. In August 1940 she was sentenced to eight years in detention and died in the detention camp in Karaganda.
bibliography:
S. Schwarz, The Jews in the Soviet Union (1951), index; lnyl, 1 (1956), 141–3.
[Moshe Mishkinsky /
Shmuel Spector (2nd ed.)]