YITSKHOK-NOKHUM VAYNTROYB

YITSKHOK-NOKHUM VAYNTROYB (b. 1865)

            He was born in Terespolye (Terespol), Shedlets (Siedlce) district, Poland.  He studied in religious primary school, yeshivas, and with private tutors.  Over the years 1875-1943, he lived in Siedlce.  He was a timber merchant and a community leader.  He was head of the Zionist party.  For many years he was a member of the Jewish community council and a Siedlce city councilor.  He published articles and memoirs in Shedletser vokhnblat (Siedlce weekly newspaper) (1928-1937).  His memoirs are an important contribution to the history of the Jewish population of Siedlce from 1975 until just before the Holocaust.  He was a spiritual leader among the Jews in the Siedlce ghetto, and he went with his two great-grandchildren at the head of the Jewish community to Treblinka—to his death.

Sources: A. Faynzilber, Af di khurves fun mayn heym (On the ruins of my home) (Tel Aviv, 1952), pp. 27-65, 71; Yitsḥak Kaspi, in Sefer yizkor lekehilat shedlets (Remembrance volume for the community of Shedlets [Siedlce]) (Tel Aviv and Buenos Aires, 1956), p. 270.