Wittenberg Simon Itzhak (1903–1945)

Also known as Shmuel Wittenberg

Simon Itzhak Wittenberg was born on 16 January 1903 in the town of Ulla, Lepel District, Vitebsk Governorate, into the family of a merchant. His father was Mendel, and his mother was Shifra. He studied at a Jewish school in Polotsk and, from 1911 to 1915, at the N. Rivosh Jewish Private Gymnasium in Riga.

In 1919, he attended and completed preparatory courses for secondary school certification at the D. Levin School, later finishing studies at a boys’ gymnasium. In 1921, he passed Ministry of Education external examinations equivalent to secondary school level. He began studying chemistry at the University of Latvia in 1919 and switched to law in 1921, completing his degree in 1931.

While studying, from 1919, he worked as a teacher in Riga’s Jewish primary schools. From 1924, he taught at the “Torah veDerekh Eretz” Jewish Gymnasium, serving as its director from 1924 to 1931. He was a member of the Council of the Jewish Education Department of the Ministry of Education. In the 1920s, he also worked as a journalist and editor for the Yiddish newspaper Vort.

Wittenberg was elected to the Riga City Council in 1925, 1928, and 1931 from the Agudat Yisrael party list (he served on the Commission for the Suppression of Drunkenness). In 1931, he was elected to the 4th Saeima (Latvian Parliament) from the same party and sat on the Public Law Commission and the Municipal Policy Section of the Union of Latvian Cities. In 1933, he served on a boycott committee against German goods formed by Jewish organisations. He was also a member of the Financial Section of the Latvian Union of Cities.

From 3 May 1933, he worked as an assistant to sworn advocate J. Elyashev in Riga; from 8 March 1940, as an assistant to D. Elyashev; and from 1 May 1940, as a sworn advocate himself. Between 1928 and 1940, he led the Jewish Youth Welfare Society and from 1921 was a leader of the Jewish Education Society. He was deputy head of the “Machane Yisrael” society and chairman of the board of the Riga Jewish Credit and Savings Society. He was a member of the Professional Chamber, a member of the Ministry of Education’s theological teachers’ censorship commission, and, from June 1934, publisher and managing editor of the newspaper Haynt.

During the Soviet occupation, he was included on an arrest list dated 14 June 1941 but was not detained. Under the German occupation beginning in summer 1941, he was interned in the Riga Ghetto, where he was active in the Jewish self-administration and headed the Statistical Department of the Ghetto Jewish Council. He died of exhaustion in the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945.

Simon Itzhak Wittenberg was married to Rosa (b. 1903), a teacher. Their son, Menachem Mendel, was born in 1925.

Publications:

Apžēlošanas akta juridiskie nosacījumi un sekas (Legal Conditions and Consequences of the Act of Pardon), Riga, 1940

Mantojuma apsardzība (CL 657–659. p.) (Protection of Inheritance. Articles 657–659 of the Civil Law), Riga, 1940