Szmul Zygielbojm
Polish politician
Died when: 48 years 80 days (578 months)Star Sign: Pisces
Szmul Mordko Zygielbojm (Polish: [ˈʂmul zɨˈɡʲɛlbɔjm];Yiddish: שמואל זיגלבוים; 21 February 1895 – 12 May 1943) was a Polish socialist politician, Bund trade-union activist, and member of the National Council of the Polish government-in-exile.
Zygielbojm was born in 1895 into a working-class family and had to leave school at age ten.In his early twenties he became involved in Bund trade-union activism, and in 1924 was elected to the Bund Central Committee.
He edited a Bund newspaper and in 1938 was elected to the Łódź city council.Upon Germany's invasion of Poland, he fled to Warsaw and was briefly a member of the Judenrat.
He fled to the Netherlands, then to England, where he was appointed to the National Council of the Polish government-in-exile.
He interviewed Jan Karski and tried to publicize the mass murder of Jews in German-occupied Poland.After the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was brutally crushed, and Warsaw's remaining Jews murdered by units under SS-Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop, Zygielbojm committed suicide to protest the inaction of the western Allies.
