Author of Warsaw Ghetto Diary
Dr. Hillel Seidman, one of the best-known religious Jewish writers and journalists died Monday, Ellul 2, (August 28) in New York. He was reported to have been close to ninety.
Seidman was born in Buczacz, Eastern Galicia and in his youth studied with Rabbi David Menahem Manish Babad, rabbi of Tarnopol and author of repsonsa Havatzelet Hasharon. Later he attended Warsaw University.
He was very active in the Agudath Israel of Poland in the Jewish public life of Warsaw – he served as secretary of the club of Jewish members of the Polish parliament and was a member of the municipal council of Warsaw – and wrote for the Agudist Yiddish press and the daily Moment.
He also wrote in Polish. His publications in this language included a book in the defense of Shechita.
In 1937 he was appointed director of the archives of the Warsaw Jewish community. He continued to occupy this position in the Ghetto. As a senior official of the Jewish community council, he was able to extend help to many Jews during the German occupation. A short time before the outbreak of the Ghetto revolt in the preparations for which he participated, Seidman was arrested by the Gestapo and thrown into Warsaw’s Paviak prison. Later he was transferred together with other Jews, who like him had been able to provide themselves with foreign citizen papers to camps in France. He was held there until the liberation of France in 1944.
For some time Seidman stayed in Paris where he was associated with efforts to help the Sheerit HaPleita. In 1946 he came to the US. After his marriage in 1950 to the former Sara Abraham, the daughter of a prominent Romanian rabbinical family, he resided for about two years in Jerusalem, serving as director general of the Israel Ministry of Welfare, which was then headed by Rabbi Yitchak Meir Levin.
His “Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto,” which was published after the war both in Hebrew and in Yiddish made a great impression.
From the end of World War II until his death he contributed to the religious Jewish press in the U.S. and in the Land of Israel, as well as to other Jewish papers in Hebrew, Yiddish and English. For some years he also published in New York a Yiddish weekly of his own: Di Yiddish Voch (the writer of these lines served for a period as his assistant at this paper).
A prolific writer, he wrote on a very great variety of topics, but particularly about the State of Israel and about problems of special concern to religious Jewry. Yearning for Polish Jewry’s pre-war Torah glory and memories of the horrors of the Holocaust were his steady companions and they guided his forceful pen. He was very close to many Gedolei Yisrael, Geonim in Torah and Hasidic leaders. He quoted their views and spiced his articles with “Gute Verter” (bon mots) he heard from them.
An extraordinary master of Yiddish style and language, he wrote in the Yiddish press in the U.S. beautiful articles on the Sidrah of the week which were widely read and discussed.
In addition to his widespread journalistic and publicistic activity, he engagd in scholarly research. He was the author of a large number of biographical essays about prominent rabbis, Jewish scholars, thinkers and communal leaders. They were published in his book Ishim Shehikarti, in the volumes of Eleh Ezkera (edited by the late Dr. Isaac Lewin) and in other Hebrew miscellanies. He also wrote about the histories of the Etz Chaim Yeshiva of Kletsk, the Beth Yitzchak Yeshiva of Kamenitz, the Keter Torah Yeshiva founded by the Rebbe of Radomsk and Yeshiva Chachmei Lublin (Mosedot Torah BeEiropa, edited by Prof. S. K. Mirsky, 2956) and about religious Jewish life in Tarnopol (Entzklopedia Shel Galuyot, 1955).
Seidman also wrote in Polish a history of the Jewish community of Warsaw, based on documents which are now no more available. The book was never printed. In English appeared “The Glory of the Jewish Holidays,” a volume abou Menachem Begin, with whom he was very close, and “Perfidy and Perversion” in the U.S. a book against Waldheim.
A very large number of people attended the funeral. Dr. Seidman was eulogized by Rabbi Yitzchak Ashkenazi, the Rebbe of Alesk, in whose shul he worshipped, Rabbi Israel Schor, Joseph Friedenson, editor of Dos Yiddishe Vort, Rabbi Meir Fund (Dr. Seidman’s son-in-law) and Rabbi Abraham Moshe Seidman (Dr. Seidman’s son ).
Dr. Seidman is survived by his wife Sarah, their daughters, Dr. Ruchma Fund (and her husband Rabbi Meir Fund) Mrs. Miriam Schechter (and her husband Dov Schechter, Esq.) and Dr. Naomi Seidman; a son, Rabbi Abraham Moshe Seidman, many grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Yehi Zichor Baruch.
American Jewish Times, Friday Sept. 15, 1995