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Jacob Waisbord, 91, Yiddish Copy Editor

OBITUARY

Jacob Waisbord, Holocaust survivor and member of the Forward Association, died December 21. He was 91.

Waisbord, whose entire family perished during World War II, fled his native Poland, where he had been a student of historian Emanuel Ringelblum.

He came to the United States on a visa from the Jewish Labor Committee that had been obtained with the help of Eleanor Roosevelt. After arriving in America in 1941, he served in the U.S. Army. He worked as a proofreader and copy editor at the Yiddish daily Der Tog and later at the Yiddish Forward.

An activist in the Left Poale Zion party while in Europe, Waisbord continued to be a devoted Zionist, raising money for Israel until his death, his daughter, Myra Treitel, told the Forward. His motto, Treitel said, was to keep “burning with a slow, steady flame” of devotion to Israel and Jewish causes.

Waisbord was a leader of Emanuel Ringelblum Branch 612 of the Workmen’s Circle, served several terms on the organization’s national executive board and spent a term as its treasurer.

He is survived by his daughter Myra, her husband, Dr. Herman Treitel, and their two sons, Mark and Stuart.

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