DICKSTEIN, SAMUEL

DICKSTEIN, SAMUEL (1885–1954), U.S. congressman. Dickstein, who was born in Vilna, Lithuania, was taken to the U.S. in 1887, when his family settled in New York's Lower East Side. In 1917 he was elected to the Board of Aldermen of New York City, and two years later to the State Legislature. In Albany he drafted several housing bills and drew up the first Kosher-Slaughtering Laws of New York State. Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from the Lower East Side in 1922, Dickstein began a career there that spanned 22 years. As chairman of the House Immigration and Naturalization Committee, he lashed out constantly against alleged subversives both on the right and left during the 1930s and proposed that the naturalization and alien laws be used against them. A faithful member of the New York City Democratic political machine, Dickstein was elected a New York State Supreme Court justice in 1945, and served until his death. (Richard Skolnik) DICKSTEIN (Dykstajn), SZYMON DICKSTEIN (Dykstajn), SZYMON (pseudonym Jan Mlot; 1858–1884), Polish naturalist and socialist theoretician. Born in Warsaw, he took special interest in new trends in natural science and was one of the translators of the works of Darwin and Spencer and was active in socialist circles. The growing repression of Polish socialists led him to immigrate in 1878 to Switzerland and later to France. Though at first influenced   by anarchist ideas, Dickstein subsequently became a Marxist and joined the "First Proletariat" (the Polish Marxist Party). He maintained close ties with leading Russian revolutionaries including Plekhanov and devoted himself to popularizing Marxist socialism. In 1881 he published one of the first popular versions of Marx's Kapital and in the following year translated several works of Ferdinand Lassalle into Polish. His activities as a popularizer and press columnist had a great influence on the ideology of the first workers' parties in Poland. (Abraham Wein)