Honigsman, Yakov Samoilovich

Jacob Honigsman was born into the family of a Jewish joiner. He studied at the heder , yeshiva , then at the school of working youth. At the beginning of World War II in September 1939, he fled from Nazi-occupied Poland to Soviet Belarus. He got a job as a laborer.

In 1940 he entered the 2nd year of the Mogilev Pedagogical Institute (now the A. M. Kuleshov Mogilev State University ). On July 5, 1941, Y. Honigsman left Mogilev with the last echelon and reached Kuibyshev. After completing two courses in the history department of the State Pedagogical and Teacher Institute , he was drafted into the army and sent by the institute’s directorate to a military school, but he, as a native of bourgeois Poland, was enrolled into the " labor army " and sent in search of uranium ore deposits in Karakum .

Given the excellent knowledge of foreign languages, J. Honigsman was recalled to Moscow as a translator from German. At the end of 1944 he moved to Kiev , where he graduated from Kiev University .

In June 1945, Jacob Honigsman moved with his family to Lviv. First he worked in the Commission for the Repatriation of Polish Citizens, then as a librarian in the Cabinet of Judaics at the Lviv branch of the library of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR , then as an assistant in the department of Marxism-Leninism in one of the Lviv institutes. In May 1949, in the midst of the struggle against cosmopolitanism , the Jewish Cabinet was liquidated. After that, J. Honigsman worked for 10 years as a teacher of history and German in a rural school. During this time, he wrote a dissertation on the oil fields of Western Ukraine, which he successfully defended in 1960. In 1961, he was invited to teach at the Drohobych Pedagogical Institute (now Drohobych State Pedagogical University named after Ivan Franko ).

In 1972 - Doctor of Economics. Since 1974, he worked at the Ternopil Financial and Economic Institute . In 1976, J. Honigsman was a professor at the Department of Political Economy of the Lviv Polytechnic Institute , and since 1979, a professor.

He bore the honorary title - “The Elite of the Economic Science of Lviv” ^[1] .

He died in Lviv and is buried at the Yanovsky cemetery ^[2] .

J. Honigsman is the author of 4 monographs on the history of the national economy of Western Ukraine, more than 15 books, more than 100 journal and newspaper publications on the history of Ukrainian Jewry, including in foreign publications.

The first publications of Professor Honigsman on the history of the Jews of Galicia and Lvov saw the light during the years of perestroika, although he accumulated materials on this topic for years. The most famous works:

• "Jews of Ukraine" in 2 volumes,
• “The Holocaust of Jewishness in Western Ukraine”,
• “People, years, events”,
• "Zbirnik articles",
• The Jews of Brody,
• “600 years and 2 years. History of the Jews Drogobych and Borislav ",
• "Jewish agriculture in Ukraine",
• "A review of documentary sources on the history of Jews in the Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine in Lviv,"
• "Charity of the Jews of Eastern Galicia",
• “The Holocaust of Lviv Jewry (1941-1943)”,
• " Yanovsky camp ",
• "Political parties and groups among the Jews of Poland and Western Ukraine in 1919-1939.",
• "Fraternal assistance of the working people of Western Ukraine to the Spanish people in the fight against fascism (1936-1939),"
• "Judenrats in Western Ukraine",
• “ I. G. Orshansky is an outstanding lawyer and historian of the Jews of Russia. (To the 130th anniversary of the death of 1875-2005) ”and others.

Honigsman's books have been translated into many languages ​​and published in different countries.

• Adam Redzik, "Profesor Jakub Honigsman. In memoriam", Słowo Żydowskie, nr 6 (448) 2009, s. 14-17 (Polish)

• Gringhouse D. Teacher of Jewish History (inaccessible link)
• Jacob Honigsman. Political parties and groups among the Jews of Poland and Western Ukraine in 1919–1939 Jewish Eurasia Magazine No. 1 (8) January - March 2005 Tevet - Adar II 5765