Vladimir Medem

The Bundist leader Vladimir Davidovich Medem grew up in Latvia and Minsk, in a family that had converted to Christianity. After joining the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party and the Bund, he was repeatedly jailed, lived in exile in Bern, and spent time imprisoned in Warsaw. Opposing communism, Medem moved to New York in 1920. As a theorist of nationalism, Medem proposed that the state protect minorities by granting them national-cultural autonomy. He mastered Yiddish, advocated the establishment of Yiddish schools, and fought for the rights of Jewish workers. The Medem Sanatorium for patients of tuberculosis, in Miedzeszyn, near Warsaw, was named in his honor, as is the Medem Library, the Yiddish resource in Paris.