People

Zaks (Saks) Icchak (1887 Radomsko – 1942 Treblinka) – teacher, composer, vocalist, conductor.

His father, Szlomo, was a cantor in Radomsko; he managed his son's initial musical education.

Icchak Zaks worked as a music teacher at the L.Weintraub Jewish Gymnasium. Before the First World War, he founded a music section in Radomsko at the local youth organization "Kultura"; he created a choir, organized music events. At the end of the war, on his initiative, "Kultura" bought musical instruments from Austrian soldiers leaving the city, which enabled him to create an orchestra.

After the war, he lived in Częstochowa. He became a conductor of the great municipal synagogue, and worked as a music teacher at the local gymnasium. He studied pedagogy at the Warsaw conservatory. A choir he created in Częstochowa numbered 120 people and performed accompanied by a 60-person orchestra.

After moving to Łódź, Zaks managed and conducted "Hazomir", a local choir operating at the Jewish Music and LiteratureSociety (Żydowskie Towarzystwo Muzyczno-Literackie). Despite the crisis in 1932, caused by the departure of some singers to "Szir" (in Hebrew: "Song"), a choir created by I. Fajwyszys, Zaks managed to maintain the high quality of his choir. Under his direction in 1939, the choir performed Giuseppe Verdi's opera, "La traviata", with the text translated into Yiddish As a composer, Zaks adapted Jewish folk and artistic songs for the choir.

In the first days of World War II, he evacuated to Białystok. After the city was taken over by the Russians, he managed a factory choir and co-directed the city radio station.

After some time he returned to Warsaw: his family lived in Warsaw ghetto. Soon, he created and led a choir there (also an inter-school children's choir)

He died in the Treblinka extermination camp.

Icchak Zaks (in the middle) with the performers of "La traviata"