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2,144 records
Kompert, Leopold
(1822–1886), novelist, poet, and journalist. The son of a struggling wool merchant in Münchengrätz (Mnichovo Hradiště), Leopold Kompert owed much of his interest in Judaism to his mother and his grandfather, a rabbi. He …
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Kon, Feliks
(1864–1941), revolutionary politician in Poland and the Soviet Union. Feliks Kon (known by many pseudonyms, including Bolesław Janowski, Feliks Bolesławski, and F. C. Stożyński) was born in Warsaw into a wealthy merchant…
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Konin
City in central Poland about two-thirds of the way on the east–west route from Warsaw to Poznań. The Jews of Konin probably arrived from Poznań and Kalisz (about 50 km due south of Konin) and are first mentioned in a Pol…
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Kook, Avraham Yitsḥak
(1865–1935), rabbinic leader, halakhist, theologian, and mystic. Best known as the first Ashkenazic chief rabbi of modern Palestine and the major theologian of religious Zionism, Kook lived in Latvia and Lithuania before…
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Kopelian, Efim Zakharovich
(1912–1975), Soviet theater and cinema actor. Born in Rechitsa, Belorussia, Kopelian moved to Leningrad with his parents and began his studies at the Architecture Faculty of the Leningrad Academy of Arts, at the same tim…
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Korczak, Janusz
(1878/79–1942), physician, educator, and writer. Janusz Korczak (originally Henryk Goldszmit) was born in Warsaw to a secular family strongly acculturated into Polish culture and imbued with a tradition of social activis…
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Korn, Rokhl
(1898–1982), Yiddish poet and short-story writer. Raised on a farming estate called Sucha Gora (Dry Mountain) in eastern Galicia, Rokhl Korn was tutored in the classics of Polish literature. Polish was the language of he…
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Kornfeld, Paul
(1889–1942), dramatist, expressionist writer and theorist, and stage director. Born and raised in Prague in the generation of Franz Kafka, Paul Kornfeld moved to Germany and made an important contribution to German expre…
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Kornfeld, Zsigmond
(1852–1909), banker and financial expert. Zsigmond Kornfeld was born in the Czech town of Golčûv Jenikov (Ger., Goltsch-Jenikau), the nephew of Aharon Kornfeld, who was the last great head of a yeshiva in Bohemia. At age…
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Kosov-Vizhnits Hasidic Dynasty
An extensive line of tsadikim of the Hager family, active from the end of the eighteenth century in Galicia, in Bucovina, and especially in Transylvania and Subcarpathian Rus’. Its descendants serve as rebbes to this day…
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Kossovskii, Vladimir
(1867–1941), Bundist leader. Vladimir Kossovskii (pseudonym of Nokhem Mendl Levinson) was born in Dvinsk (now Daugavpils, Latvia) and attended high school in Kovno (Kaunas). As a result of his revolutionary activities, h…
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Kotik, Yekhezkl
(1847–1921), Yiddish memoir writer and public activist. Yekhezkl Kotik was born in Kamenets Litovsk (Grodno [Hrodna] province; now in Belarus), to a well-to-do family of communal officials and leaseholders who had been t…
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Kovner, Abba
(1918–1987), partisan and poet, leader and intellectual, and a central figure in twentieth-century Jewish and Israeli history and cultural life. Born in Sebastopol, Abba Kovner moved to Vilna as a child; the Jewish commu…
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Kovner, Avraham Uri
(Arkadii Grigor’evich Kovner; 1841/42–1909), Lithuanian maskil and pioneer of modern Hebrew literary criticism. A native of Vilna, Avraham Kovner studied at several yeshivas in the Minsk region, and after reaching adulth…
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Kozintsev, Grigorii Mikhailovich
(1905–1973), Soviet film director. Grigorii Kozintsev began his career as a student of the artist Aleksandra Ekster; after the revolution, he organized large-scale street theater. In 1920 he entered the studio school of …
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Košice
City in the center of eastern Slovakia. Košice (Hun., Kassa; Ger., Kaschau) belonged to Greater Hungary until World War I and was the seat of Abaúj-Torna county. Jews first settled in Kassa only after the Diet of 1839–18…
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Kramsztyk, Izaak
(1814?–1889), teacher, author, and rabbi. Izaak Kramsztyk was a leading figure in the period of Jewish–Polish rapprochement in the 1860s and in the movement for religious reform. The son of a merchant and prominent membe…
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Kramsztyk, Roman
(1885–1942), Polish painter and illustrator. Roman Kramsztyk was a scion of two of the most prominent Jewish families of Warsaw, the Kramsztyks and the Fajans, who belonged to the Polonizing Jewish elite. This small grou…
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Kranz, Ya‘akov ben Volf
(ca. 1740–1804), preacher and exegete known popularly as the Dubno Magid, and dubbed “the Jewish Aesop” by Moses Mendelssohn. Ya‘akov Kranz was born in the town of Zietil (Dzyatłava) to Ze’ev Volf and Hinde, daughter of …
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Kraushar, Aleksander
(1843–1931), historian, poet, and translator. Born in Warsaw, Aleksander Kraushar came from a moderately prosperous commercial family—his father, Herman, was a senior broker in the Warsaw stock exchange. Kraushar attende…
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