The Bund and Jewish life in the Pale
David Losz was born sometime after
Svisloch's first snowfall in October 1909 to
Moishe Losz and his wife Rose (née Lazarovitch).
Cite error: Closing </ref> missing for <ref> tag; see the help page[1] Lewis's political activism began in the
shtetl he lived in from 1909 until 1921.
[2] Svisloch was located in the
Pale of Settlement, the western-most region of the
Russian Empire, in what is now
Belarus. After World War I it became a Polish border town, occasionally occupied by the
Soviet Union during the
Polish-Soviet War of the early 1920s. Jewish people were in the majority, numbering 3,500 out of Svisloch's 4,500 residents. Unlike many of the other shtetls in the Pale, it had an industrial economy based on
tanning. Its semi-urban industrial population was receptive to
social democratic politics and the
labour movement, as embodied by the
Jewish Labour Bund.
[2]
