Moses Kligsberg Papers

Moses David Kligsberg (1901-1975) was born in Warsaw, Poland to a family of rabbinic lineage. His father, Icek Matys Kligsberg, was a full-time scholar and his mother, Gitla (née Rygal), managed a store. Moses Kligsberg attended kheyder until the age of ten, at the same time studying secular subjects privately. He later attended a Polish state school, from which he graduated just before the First World War. He attended evening courses at the Warsaw Business School for one year, after which he enrolled in a Jewish vocational school. There Moses Kligsberg studied electrical engineering, graduating in 1920. His interest then switched to the humanities, and in 1922 he enrolled in the Philosophy Department at the Free University of Warsaw, which he attended for two years but never graduated.

In 1917 Moses Kligsberg joined the Yugnt Bund Tsukunft, the young people's organization of the Jewish Labor Bund. He was a member of the Central Committee of the Tsukunft and secretary of its Warsaw branch. From 1921 to 1923 he worked as a librarian at the Groser Bibliotek in Warsaw. Thereafter he taught natural science, mathematics and general studies to youth workers in night schools run by the unions. From 1930 until the outbreak of the Second World War, Moses Kligsberg was Secretary of the Gezelshaft tsu Farshpreytn Bildung tsvishn Yidishe Arbeter (Organization for Educating Jewish Workers), and ran their night school. At the same time he was involved in numerous cultural and educational projects for the Tsukunft.

Throughout this time, Moses Kligsberg was engaged in a systematic and intensive program of self-education. He had stopped attending university classes after two years, partly for financial reasons and partly because he preferred independent study. He studied mostly philosophy, sociology, and psychology.

In 1926 Moses Kligsberg became a regular contributor to the journal Yugnt veker (Young Worker) in Warsaw, for which he wrote various popular science articles on sociological, psychological, historical and economic themes for the next fifteen years. He also contributed to the Polish monthly journal Nasza valka (Our Struggle), mostly in the form of reviews of scholarly books and occasionally also longer articles. In 1938 Moses Kligsberg became the editor of the journal Naye kultur (New Culture), to which he was also a contributor. He also published articles in the Warsaw journals Undzer tsayt (Our Time) and Foroys (Forward).

In 1938 Moses Kligsberg's monograph Yugnt psikhologye un sotsialistishe dertsiung (Youth Psychology and Socialist Education) was published by the Kultur Lige. Thus began Moses Kligsberg's specialization in 'yugnt forshung' (youth research). In 1939 he sent the manuscript of his unpublished article "Di psikhologye fun shpil un estetishn genus" to YIVO in Vilna, and was then invited by Max Weinreich to participate in the YIVO Aspirant (YIVO research fellow). With the outbreak of the second World War Moses Kligsberg found refuge in as-yet unoccupied Vilna as a YIVO aspirant. There he began a project of analyzing the collection of youth autobiographies under the title "Perzenlekhe tsiln un gezelshaftlekhe idealn bay der yidisher yugnt in poyln". In 1940, when the Soviet army occupied Vilna, Moses Kligsberg sent his collected notes and materials to the newly-established YIVO in New York.

Moses Kligsberg was granted a special visa and came to New York via Kobe (Japan) in April, 1941. He joined the YIVO staff as Max Weinreich's assistant in charge of research projects. In that capacity, after the war Moses Kligsberg corresponded with East European Jewish refugees around the world, asking them to collect materials for YIVO again. As secretary of the contest committee, he organized and administered three YIVO essay contests: 1) Autobiographies of Immigrants (1942); 2) The Experience of Jewish soldiers in World War II (1946); and 3) Supplementary Contest among participants in the autobiographies contest (1953). He was the project manager for the Yiddish language publication of Herman Kruk's Vilna Ghetto diary and oversaw several other YIVO publication projects. He was also a consultant to the Max Weinreich Center for Advanced Jewish Studies.

For over thirty years Moses Kligsberg was in charge of all publicity work for YIVO. In 1950 he was appointed editor of the Yedies fun yivo (YIVO News), which position he retained until the end of his days. He wrote the Yiddish version of the Yedies, which was originally translated to English by Shlomo Noble, and later was translated and written by others.

In the late 1940s and 1950s, Moses Kligsberg was an active member of the I.L. Cahan Folklore Club at YIVO, and was on the editorial committee for their journal Yidisher folklor. From 1963 on, Kligsberg also coordinated, produced and wrote scripts for the YIVO radio program on WEVD broadcast station.

Though lacking in formal degrees, Moses Kligsberg had scholarly ambitions and considered himself a sociologist. It was his lifelong ambition to write a sociological analysis of Jewish youth in Poland based on the Vilna YIVO autobiographies which came out of the contest that took place before World War II. The book never came to be, but Kligsberg wrote and published numerous articles related to the autobiographies and/or Jewish youth in YIVO Bleter / The YIVO Annual, and other journals. Notably, his 100-page article "Di yidishe yugnt bavegung in poyln tsvishn beyde velt milkhomes" (The Jewish Youth Movement in Poland between the Two World Wars), appeared in Studies on Polish Jewry 1919-1939 in 1974.

Since his arrival in the United States, Moses Kligsberg was an active member of the American branch of the Jewish Labor Bund. He was secretary of the Foreign Delegation of the Tsukunft, and as such maintained correspondence with Bund and Tsukunft leaders around the world, many of whom were also his personal friends from Poland. Moses Kligsberg helped organize and coordinate Bund youth groups and activities in New York, including a branch of SKIF, the children's movement of the Bund. He was an editor, together with Alexander Erlich and Sholem Hertz, of Yugnt veker, the magazine published by the Bund in the United States. Moses Kligsberg was also a founder and driving spirit of Camp Hemshekh, the Catskills (New York) summer camp run by the Bund from 1959-1978.

Moses Kligsberg also played a central administrative role in the United Jewish Survivors of Nazi Persecution (aka Katsetler Farband), a membership organization for Holocaust survivors in North America and Mexico.

Moses Kligsberg's personal life was marked by sorrow. In 1938 he married Mala Bergman in Warsaw. They had one daughter, Guta, born in 1939. When Moses Kligsberg went to Vilna later that year, he was forced to leave his family behind. He corresponded with his wife Mala until 1942. Moses Kligsberg made several attempts through U.S. and Canadian authorities to bring his wife and daughter to the United States, but was continually denied. They remained in the Warsaw Ghetto and eventually perished in the Holocaust.

Moses Kligsberg never remarried. He settled in the Bronx in the Amalgamated Houses, the home to a large community of Polish Bundists, Holocaust survivors and refugees. He maintained close contact and correspondence with many friends and acquaintances in New York and around the world, and was dedicated to helping war refugees. He was much beloved by young people and maintained devoted friendships with many of his friends' children, students at YIVO, and campers and counselors from Camp Hemshekh.

Unknown to most people during his lifetime was Moses Kligsberg's dedicated pursuit of his musical passion. From 1943 to 1954 he was enrolled at Teachers College of Columbia University, where he studied music history, composition and orchestration, as well as violin and piano. He also took private music lessons. For several summers he participated in the summer Composers' Conference at Bennington College, Vermont, where he presented and made recordings of several original compositions. Like many 'Tsukunftists' of his generation, Kligsberg loved the outdoors and was an avid mountain climber, often taking hiking trips through the northeast United States and Europe.

Moses Kligsberg died in New York on June 25, 1975 after a prolonged illness.