SHNEIDERMAN Origin of surname
Surnames derive from one of many different origins. Sometimes there may be more than one explanation for the same name. This family name derives from an occupation, profession or trade (also connected with raw material, finished product or implements associated with that trade).
Shneiderman is a variant of Schneiderman(n), which means "tailor" in German. Shneidman is a German variant. As a Jewish name it is a translation of the Hebrew Hayat which first appears as the term for "tailor" in mishnaic and midrashic literature. Tailors are mentioned more frequently in the Talmud. In biblical times, the name is recorded in an Aramaic form with the 3rd century commentator and author of the Midrash, Daniel Hayyata. The Hebrew form was rendered in Latin letters as Alfayate in the 13th century and Hayete and Hayet in the 14th and 15th centuries. Khayat is documented in 1325 in Pamplona, Spain, with Jocef Bar Yom Tob Khayat. Hayyat is recorded in the 15th century with the Spanish kabbalist Judah Ben Jacob Hayyat (circa 1450-circa 1510), Hayatizade in the 17th century with the Turkish physician Mustapha Hayatizade, and Chajjat in Burgenland, Austria, in the 18th century with Moses Ben Isak Chajjat. Equivalent terms in other languages have also become Jewish family names, among them the Yiddish Chaitman, and Shnaider, the Polish form Sznajder, the English Snyder and Taylor, the Russian Portnoy, Ukrainian Kravitz, Hungarian Szabo, and Romanian Croitor(u).
The German Schneider is recorded as a Jewish family name in the late 14th century, and again in the 17th century with Moses Schneider of Frankfurt am Main, western Germany, who attended the Leipzig fair in 1681.
Distinguished bearers of the Jewish family name Shneiderman include the 20th century American leader of women's suffrage and trade union movements, Rose Shneiderman, and the 20th century Polish-born American journalist, author and lecturer Samuel L. Shneiderman.
Samuel Leib Shneiderman
(Personality)Samuel Leib Shneiderman (Szmuel Lejb Sznajderman) (1906-1996), Yiddish writer and journalist, born in Kazimierz Dolny, Poland (then part of the Russian Empire). He attended the University of Warsaw and studied at the High School for Journalism.
Shneiderman started working for "Nasz Przegląd", Hajnt", "Chwili", "Nowy Dziennik", and other of Jewish newspapers in Poland. In 1931 he moved to Paris, France, where he was active as a correspondent for a number of Jewish newspapers of Poland. He went to Spain in late 1930s and covered the civil war there.
In 1933 Shneiderman married Halina Szymin, the sister of the photographer David Szymin "Chim".
Before WW2 Shneiderman published a number of books in Yiddish, including "Tsvishn Nalevkes Aifl unturn" ("Between Nalewki to the Eiffel Tower", 1936), which deals with the fate of the Jewish people during the Great Depression. He is the author of an introduction to "Krig in Shpanien" ("War in Spain", 1938) a collection of reportages with photographs by his brother-in-law David Szymin "Chim" (later David Seymour) who covered the war for several French and American newspapers. His poems were published in "Di gilden feigl" ("The Golden Bird", 1927), and "Fayern in shtot" ("Fire in the town", 1932). During the 1930s Shneiderman was co-editor of the "Almanach Literacki" ("Literary Almanac") published in Warsaw in 1931, and translated into Yiddish a number of literary works.
In 1938 he moved to South Africa, where he worked for "Afrikaner Yiddishe Zeitung" newspaper. During late 1930s he travelled extensively over a number of countries in East Africa and visited the Land of Israel for the first time in 1939. He immigrated to the USA in 1940 settling in New York and became an American citizen in 1949.
Shneiderman visited Poland after WW2. In July 1946 he reported on the pogrom against Holocaust survivors that took place in Kielce. His impressions were published in a Yiddish book "Tsvishn shrek un hofnung: a raiz iber nayen Polin" ("Between Fear and Hope: A Journey through the New Poland", 1946). His other Yiddish books include "Ilya Ehrenburg" (1968), "The Stormy Life and Work of Artur Szyk" (1980), while his English books include "Between Fear and Hope" (1947), "The Warsaw Heresy" (1959), and "The River Remembers" (1978).
Shneiderman was the editor of "Warsaw Ghetto: A Diary by Mary Berg" (1945, and then published in nine languages), of the Yiddish collection "Tsuzamen" ("Together", 1974) and of the war memoirs of Gemma LaGuardia Gluck, sister of New York City's Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. He wrote the narration to the full-length documentary film "The Last Chapter: The Rise and Fall of the Thousand Year Old Jewish Community in Poland" (1965, narrated by Theodore Bikel, Ben-Lar Productions, New York).
Shneiderman's journalistic work was published in the Jewish daily "Forward" of New York and in other Yiddish daily newspapers throughout the world, in addition to periodicals as "Midstream" (New York), "L'Arche" (Paris), and "Al Hamishmar" (Tel Aviv).
Shneiderman served as President of the Yiddish P. E. N. Club. In 1986 he was awarded the Manger Prize for Yiddish literature.
The S. L. Shneiderman Archives, comprising a rich array of essays and journalistic publications in Yiidish and English along with translations of Shneiderman's works into Hebrew, Polish and other languages, together with their sources and additional material that Shneiderman and his wife collected over seventy years, were donated to the Diaspora Rsearch Institute at Tel Aviv University. The S. L. and Eileen Shneiderman Yiddish Book Collection was donated to the University of Maryland in the USA.
Shneiderman settled in Israel in 1994 and died in Tel Aviv two years later.