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(1921), Das Kaiser und der Architekt (1924), Moses (1924). In
addition, he illustrated the German version of Lewis Carroll’s
Through the Looking Glass (1923). For Birnbaum the breakup
of multinational Austria-Hungary was a catastrophe, as he
had pushed himself out of contemporary discourse as a result
of his pro-monarchical ideas. When Austria was occupied by
Nazi Germany he was granted entry to the Netherlands upon
the intervention of leading Dutch artists. Here he continued
to write but gave up his graphic work for lack of artists’ materials.
His selection from his poetical output (Gedichte, eine
Auswahl), appeared in 1957. Because of his uncompromising
opposition to fashionable modern ideologies he became an
outsider again and died underappreciated in the Netherlands.
Since then there has been a revival of interest in him. Die verschlossene
Kassette. Die Legende vom gutherzigen Engel and
Von der Seltsamkeit der Dinge, ed. C. Schneider (incl. bibl.)
were published in 1978.
bibliography: T. Biene, “Uriel Birnbaum – ignoriert, emigriert,
vergessen. Stationen im Leben eines prophetischen Dichters,
Denkers und Zeichners,” in: H. Wuerzner (ed.), Österreichische Exilliteratur
in den Niederlanden 1934–40 (1986), 127–143; G. Schirmers
(ed.), Uriel Birnbaum 1894–1956. Dichter und Maler (1990); M. Neuwirth:
“Die Hoffahrt des Architekten. Künstlerisches Selbstverständnis
bei Uriel Birnbaum,” in: Das jüdische Echo, 48 (1999), 252–260; K.
Zijlmans: “Juedische Kuenstler im Exil. Uriel und Menachem Birnbaum,”
in: H. Wuerzner (ed.), Oesterreichische Exilliteratur in den
Niederlanden 1934–40 (1986), 145–155.
[Sonja Beyer (2nd ed.)]
BIRNBOIM, MOSES JOSEPH (1789–1831), secret agent of
the czarist police and blackmailer. He started to work for the
Warsaw police in 1820, in charge of about 30 servants recruited
to spy on their employers, mostly persons prominent in Polish
political and economic life. Later sent to Germany, he mixed in
Polish student circles purporting to be an opponent of czarist
absolutism to gain the students’ confidence. He subsequently
returned to Warsaw, using his position to blackmail Jews, exploiting
the czarist anti-ḥasidic legislation, and earning the hatred
of both Jews and Poles, until he himself was denounced to
the police. In an effort to save himself, he apostatized and adopted
the name Mateusz Józef, but was arrested in 1824 and in
1830 sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment. During the Polish
uprising of 1831, Birnboim, along with many traitors and others
hated by the Poles, was taken from prison by Jews, brought
to Franciszkańska Street in Warsaw, where most of his Jewish
victims lived, and hanged from a lantern.
Bibliography: Warszawski, in: YIVO Historishe Shriftn, 2 (1937),
335–54; J. Shatzky, Geshikhte fun Yidn in Varshe, 1 (1947), 327–8.
BIRÓ (Blau), LAJOS (1880–1948), Hungarian author and
playwright. Biró was born in Vienna. He studied in Hungary,
and became a journalist working for the liberal Budapesti
Napló and the radical Vil g. In 1906, for political reasons, he
went with his family to Berlin, but returned to Budapest in
1909. During the October Revolution of 1918, Biró was appointed
secretary of state at the Foreign Ministry. However,
birobidzhan
he left Hungary and finally settled in Great Britain, where
together with Sir Alexander *Korda he founded the London
Film Production Company, of which he remained a director
until his death. Biró’s Hungarian writing covered short stories
and drama. The former included Huszonegy novella (“Twentyone
short stories,” 1908) and Kunsz ll si emberek (“People of
Kunszállás,” 1912), and among his plays were Sárga liliom (“Yellow
Lily,” 1912) and Hotel Imperial (1917). In his later years he
turned to writing film scripts, of which the most famous were
The Way of All Flesh and The Private Life of Henry VIII. In 1921,
when living in Vienna, he published A bazini zsidók (“The
Jews of Bazin”), a story about a blood libel in 1529, when the
entire Jewish community of a village near Pressburg was tortured
and burned to death. In this vivid description, Biró depicts
the fate of the Jew in the Diaspora. In his essay, A zsidók
útja (1921, “The Way of the Jews”) he rejected both assimilation
and Jewish nationalism, defining the Jewish question as
unanswerable, but enthusiastically accepting the existence and
continuity of the Jewish people.
Bibliography: Magyar Zsidó Lexikon (1929), 126; Magyar
Irodalmi Lexikon (1963), 165–6.
[Baruch Yaron]
BIROBIDZHAN, colloquial name of the district (oblast)
in Russia, for which the official designation was the “Jewish
Autonomous District” (Avtonomnaya Oblast). Part of the
Khabarovsk territory (kray) in the former Soviet Far East, the
region is located between 47° 40ʹ–49° 20ʹ N. and 130° 30ʹ–135°
E. To the west, south, and southeast, it is bordered by the
Amur River, the boundary between the former U.S.S.R. and
Manchuria (China). Its area is 13,900 sq. mi. (36,000 sq. km.).
On January 1, 1961, the estimated population of the district
numbered 179,000 and that of the capital, the city of Birobidzhan,
49,000. The Jewish population of the region numbered
14,269 (8.8% of the total) in 1959; of these 83.9% lived in cities
and urban settlements, while 16.1% lived in villages. The capital
is located on the Bolshaya Bira River and on the Trans-Siberian
Railroad which cuts through the northern sector of the
territory from west to east. Its industries include farm machinery,
transformers, textiles, clothing, and furniture. The climate
is influenced by the prevailing monsoons and the surrounding
mountains to the west and north. It improves progressively
southward, the most favorable conditions prevailing in the
Amur River strip in the southern part of the region. The winter
is cold and dry with little snow, spring is mild, summer is hot
and humid, and fall is dry and pleasant. Birobidzhan has numerous
rivers and lakes abounding with fish. Most of its area
is composed of heavy soils with an excess of moisture. A considerable
part consists of swamps and about one-third is covered
with forest. Birobidzhan has abundant mineral wealth, for
the most part not commercially exploited, except for tin ores
which are the basis of a large national metallurgical works,
the “Khinganolovo.” Grains, pulses, potatoes, vegetables, and
other crops are grown. However, at the time when Jewish
settlement began here, the region suffered from an almost
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