Szymon Tenenbaum (31 January 1892 – 28 November 1941) was a Polish zoologist and entomologist from

Warsaw Warsaw, officially the Capital City of Warsaw, is the capital and List of cities and towns in Poland, largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the Vistula, River Vistula in east-central Poland. Its population is officially estimated at ...

. He died of starvation and exhaustion under home arrest in the Warsaw Ghetto during the German invasion of Poland. His vast collections of insects were saved during the second world war by Antonina and

Jan Żabiński Jan Żabiński () (8 April 1897 – 26 July 1974) and his wife Antonina Żabińska (née Erdman) (1908–1971) were a Polish couple from Warsaw, recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations for their heroic rescue of Jews during the H ...

at the Warsaw Zoo.

Life and work

Tenenbaum was born in Warsaw in a Jewish family. Even as a child, he collected insect specimens, and his father brought specimens of natural history as souvenirs from trips. He was influenced by the beetle collector Ludwik Hildt. After studying at the Kreczmar High School he went to the

Jagiellonian University The Jagiellonian University (, UJ) is a public research university in Kraków, Poland. Founded in 1364 by Casimir III the Great, King Casimir III the Great, it is the oldest university in Poland and one of the List of oldest universities in con ...

where he studied the anatomy of the Malphigian tubules under

Henryk Ferdynand Hoyer Henryk Ferdynand Hoyer (13 July 1864 – 17 October 1947) was a Polish zoologist and professor of comparative anatomy at the Jagiellonian University from 1894 to 1934 serving also as its rector. He is sometimes referred to as Henryk Hoyer junior ...

. He then became a teacher at the Jewish College in Warsaw. In 1932 he received a PhD from the University of Vilnius, studying entomology under

Jan Prüffer Jan Prüffer (1890– 1969) was a Polish biologist, a taxonomic authority in entomology.Jan Prüffer
...

(1890–1958). He specialized especially in the beetles, naming his first new species from the Balearic Islands (visiting it in 1913) after his teacher, ''Dendarus hildti''. Still later he described ''Kytorrhinus hoyeri'' honoring Hoyer (now considered a synonym of ''Bruchidius albolineatus'')and ''Scaurus eleonorae'' for his wife Eleonora. Tenenbaum wrote a zoological guide to the vicinity of Warsaw
Przewodnik zoologiczny po okolicach Warszawy
with Stanisław Michał Sumiński in 1921 which describes the habitats in the region including many that no longer exist. He also took an interest in herpetology. During the German invasion of Poland in 1939 he was trapped in the

Warsaw Ghetto The Warsaw Ghetto (, officially , ; ) was the largest of the Nazi ghettos during World War II and the Holocaust. It was established in November 1940 by the Nazi Germany, German authorities within the new General Government territory of Occupat ...

, locked up with his wife Eleonora and daughter Irena. He became unwell, and although his friends the Żabiński couple (depicted in the film The Zookeeper's Wife) offered to organize his escape, he refused and died at home.

References

External links

On Tenenbaum's collections

Biography in Polish
*
Photographs of collections
*
Publications and taxa descriptions
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tenenbaum, Szymon 1892 births 1941 deaths Polish entomologists