Szmul Zygielbojm

Szmul Zygielbojm
שמואל זיגלבוים
National Councillor
In office March 1942 – (1943-05-12)12 May 1943
President	Władysław Raczkiewicz
Prime Minister	Władysław Sikorski
Central Committee of the Bund
In office 1924 – (1943-05-12)12 May 1943
Judenrat of the Warsaw Ghetto
In office September – November 1939
President	Adam Czerniaków
Łódź city council
In office 1938 – September 1939
Personal details
Born	(1895-02-21)21 February 1895 Borowica, Russian Empire
Died	12 May 1943(1943-05-12) (aged 48) St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, England[1]
Cause of death	Suicide
Resting place	New Mt. Carmel Cemetery, Ridgewood, New York
Nationality	Polish
Political party	General Jewish Bund
Occupation	Trade union activist, politician, journalist
Known for	Publicizing the Holocaust in Poland

Szmul Mordko Zygielbojm^[2] (Polish: [ˈʂmul zɨˈɡʲɛlbɔjm]; Yiddish: שמואל זיגלבוים; (1895-02-21)21 February 1895 – (1943-05-12)12 May 1943) was a Polish socialist politician, Bund trade-union activist, and member of the National Council of the Polish government-in-exile.

Zygielbojm was born in 1895 into a working-class family and had to leave school at age ten. In his early twenties he became involved in Bund trade-union activism, and in 1924 was elected to the Bund Central Committee. He edited a Bund newspaper and in 1938 was elected to the Łódź city council. Upon Germany's invasion of Poland, he fled to Warsaw and was briefly a member of the Judenrat.

He fled to the Netherlands, then to England, where he was appointed to the National Council of the Polish government-in-exile. He interviewed Jan Karski and tried to publicize the mass murder of Jews in German-occupied Poland. After the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was brutally crushed, and Warsaw's remaining Jews murdered by units under SS-Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop, Zygielbojm committed suicide to protest the inaction of the western Allies.