Krantz, Philip
KRANTZ, PHILIP
KRANTZ, PHILIP (pseudonym of Jacob Barukhovitsh Rombro ; 1858–1922), Yiddish journalist. Born in Rodok (Ukraine), Krantz developed early ties to revolutionary causes, and fled to Paris and later England because of his connections with the assassins of Alexander ii. In 1889 he was a delegate to the first congress of the Socialist Second International. He first contributed to Russian-Jewish periodicals but became a major Yiddish journalist in England during the 1880s. In 1890 he immigrated to the U.S., where he edited and contributed theoretical articles on socialism and translations of popular fiction to the Arbeter Tsaytung. In 1892, he edited Di *Tsukunft, and, from 1894 to 1899, Dos Abend Blatt, the first U.S. socialist Yiddish daily. In Poland in 1906–8 he edited Di Proletarishe Velt for the Polish Socialist Party. In the course of his long career he contributed as correspondent, editor, and organizer of dozens of primarily socialist and anarchist newspapers and periodicals in several countries, also publishing dozens of popularizing books on history, biography, science, and politics.
bibliography:
Rejzen, Leksikon, 3 (1929), 728–40; L. Kobrin, Mayne Fuftsik Yor in Amerike (1966), 90–102; M. Starkman, in: Filologishe Shriftn, 3 (1929), 57–82. add. bibliography: lnyl, 8 (1981), 243–9; M. Shtarkman, Geklibene Shriftn, 1 (1979), 128–34; 2 (1980), 63–70, 130–3; G.G. Branover (ed.), Rossiĭskaia evreĭskaia entsiklopediia, 2 (1995), 83.
[Henry J. Tobias /
Jerold C. Frakes (2nd ed.)]