Trank, Yisroel-Shiye
November 22, 1901–April 29, 1943
The pen name of Yisroel-Shiye Trunk, he was born in Kutne (Kutno), Poland, the son of a poor rabbi. He studied in religious primary school and synagogue study hall. He later graduated from the seminary for Jewish religious teachers in Warsaw. Over the years 1925-1929, he taught at a Hebrew high school in Kutno, and he was a teacher of Tanakh, 1932-1939, in Yitskhok Katsenelson’s high school in Lodz. He also lectured on psychoanalysis.
During the Nazi occupation, he escaped to Bialystok and until June 1940 was a teacher in the Jewish middle school in the town of Grudek (Gródek, Horodok), near Bialystok. At the time of Soviet compulsory passportization, he was arrested and deported to a Soviet camp in the Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, where he worked in the forest and suffered from hunger and want. In September 1941 he was freed and made his way to Syktyvkar, worked there at hard labor, and then—due to a false accusation—was again sent to a camp where he became ill and died of hunger.
He debuted in print in Globus (The Globe) in Warsaw (1933), with a piece entitled “A Psikhologishe Studye vegn Sh. Ashs ‘di Muter’” (A Psychological Study of Sholem Asch’s “The Mother”). He contributed as well to: Literarishe Bleter (Literary Newspaper) and Shul-Vegn (School Ways) in Warsaw; Os (Letter) in Lodz-Warsaw (and he served as editor of its scientific division); Nayer Folksblat (New People’s Newspaper) in Lodz; and the like. He wrote on psychoanalysis and other schools of psychology, as well as on issues of pedagogy.
He wrote a longer work on Sigmund Freud, a fragment of which was published in Literarishe Bleter (May 29, 1936).
He published one book: Alfred Adler, der Mentsh un zayn Lere (Alfred Adler, the Man and his Teachings) (Warsaw, 1938), 94 pp.
He was the brother of Shaye Trunk.
Sources: F. in Nayer Folksblat (Lodz) (April 21, 1938); Yidishe Shriftn (Yiddish Writings) (Lodz, 1946); M. Grosman, In Farkisheftn Land fun Legendarn Dzhugashvili, Mayne Zibn Yor Lebn in Ratnfarband, 1939-1946 (In the Enchanted Land of the Legendary Dzhugashvili (Stalin)], My Seven Years Living in the Soviet Union, 1939-1946), vol. 2 (Paris, 1949-1950), p. 75; Khayim Leyb Fuks, in Fun Noentn Over (New York) 3 (1957), p. 268.