Solomon Birnbaum

Solomon Asher Birnbaum, also Salomo Birnbaum (December 24, 1891 in Vienna – December 28, 1989 in Toronto) was a Yiddish linguist and Hebrew paleographer.

Birnbaum (1891-1989), born in Vienna, was the oldest son of Nathan Birnbaum and Rosa Korngut. He was an Austrian Jew of West Galician-Jewish descent.

Solomon Birnbaum served in World War I in the Austro-Hungarian Army, and then studied and attained a doctorate from the University of Würzburg, specializing in oriental languages. From 1922 to 1933, he filled the first worldwide Yiddish chair at the University of Hamburg. After the rise of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazis) in Germany, in 1933 Birnbaum emigrated to Great Britain with his wife, Irene Grünwald, and his children, in 1933.

From 1936 to 1957, Birnbaum was a lecturer on Hebrew paleography and epigraphy at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London. He taught Yiddish at the same time at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies of the University of London, from 1939 to 1958. During World War II, Birnbaum worked in the postal censorship for the British authorities. In 1970, he immigrated to Toronto, Canada.

Solomon Birnbaum is the father of Jacob Birnbaum, who, after his emigration to New York in 1963, helped to found the United States movement on behalf of Soviet Jewry.

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