Jakow Trachtenberg

**Jakow Trachtenberg** (  ) was a Ukrainian/Russian-born Jewish mathematician, engineer, writer, politician, inventor, and Nazi concentration camp survivor who is best known for developing the Trachtenberg system, a system of rapid mental calculation. Trachtenberg developed and formulated the Trachtenberg system while being imprisoned himself in a Nazi concentration camp.

## Biography

Jakow Trachtenberg was born on , in the city of Odessa in the Russian Empire (today in Ukraine) to Ukrainian/Russian-born Jewish parents. His father was a timber merchant and trader named Georgy Trachtenberg and his mother was Rozaliya Gogish. In 1907, at the age of 19, Jakow Trachtenberg entered the Imperial Petrograd Polytechnic University in the city of Petrograd (now called Saint Petersburg) and studied in the metallurgical department. After he completed his second year of study at the university, Trachtenberg was transferred to the mining institute of the university in 1909, where he studied mining and graduated with honors. After completing his studies in the university, Jakow Trachtenberg served in the front in the Imperial Russian Army as a medical orderly and was nominated for the silver medal "For Zeal" on the Stanislav Ribbon, for performing great military service. Trachtenberg decided to live in Petrograd and he resided at a house on 28 Mokhavskaya Street in 1917. After the October Revolution and the overthrowing of the Tsar Nicholas II and his family and the abolition of the Russian monarchy, the Soviet Bolsheviks took control of Russia and turned it into the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) in 1917, and Jakow Trachtenberg became a loyal supporter of the Bolsheviks and the Soviet Union. In April 1918, Jakow Trachtenberg was elected as the chief engineer and supervisor of the Obukhov State Plant, the large mellaturgical engineering plant based in Petrograd, and had as many as 11,000 men working under his supervision. During his time as the chief engineer of the plant, Trachtenberg proved himself to be a loyal supporter of the Bolsheviks and the Soviet Union, and also managed to overcome the worker's opposition against the Bolsheviks and their Soviet regime. On 27 September 1918, Jakow Trachtenberg was promoted and appointed as the chairman of the inter-plant commission for the restoration of the military industry and the protection of combat equipment of the Izhora, Obukhov, and the Baltic plants. The large mellaturgical engineering plants were idle, and Trachtenberg was struggling to find orders for the plants. For unknown reasons, in 1919, Jakow Trachtenberg fell out of favor with the Bolshevhiks and the Soviet regime and left his job as chairman of the three large mellaturgical plants. Jakow Trachtenberg was then forced to leave Russia, so he escaped to Germany (back then the Weimar Republic) as a refugee.
After escaping to the Weimar Republic, Jakow Trachtenberg became a stateless refugee and went to live in Berlin and settled in the Charlottenburg district of the city.
In Germany in the 1920's, Trachtenberg began working in book publishing and the trade and  became a associated and well-known and recognized person of the Russian community and ethnic minority of Germany. Jakow Trachtenberg wrote and published textbooks and brochures in Russian, and also wrote and published serials of the German-Russian magazine "Today Russian" (Russian: Сегодня Россия; German: Heute Russland) for the Russian community of Germany.  In addition, Jakow Trachtenberg also brokered and sold goods to the Soviet Union, from Germany, and studied and taught in foreign languages.

In 1930, Jakow Trachtenberg married Alisa Bredova, a Russian woman living in Germany and having German citizenship. Trachtenberg's wife Alisa Bredova was the daughter of a decorative artist who worked in the Russian Empire in the late 19th century. For the sake of their marriage and wedding, Alisa Bredova renounced her German citizenship. Jakow Trachtenberg himself had a Nansen passport (a passport issued by the League of Nations to stateless refugees like him). Jakow Trachtenberg and his wife, Alisa Bredova, never had any children.
In 1933, after Adolf Hitler rose to power and took control over Germany with the Nazi Party, Jakow Trachtenberg fell into crisis and got a bad reputation. Because he was bith a well-known and recognized Russian figure and Jewish, Jakow Trachtenberg was often persecuted and harassed by the Nazi regime. Trachtenberg attempted to reconcile with the Nazi regime and even went as far as to make attempts to establish good relations with the Nazis. After Nazi Germany was established, Jakow Trachtenberg wrote and published a pamphlet for the Nazi regime featuring a selection of quotes from many famous and important Jews, and Trachtenberg even maintained false claims that foreign media and propaganda exaggerated Nazi Germany's cruelty and hostility towards Jews. For a brief period, Jakow Trachtenberg's claims were even supported by the Foreign Ministry and the Propaganda Ministry. Ultimately, in 1934, Jakow Trachtenberg stopped attempting to maintain good relations with the Nazi regime and realized these actions were grave mistakes, so Trachtenberg left Germany and escaped to Switzerland to flee the Nazi persecution. In 1935, Jakow Trachtenberg left Switzerland and immigrated to Austria and went to live in the city of Vienna. In Austia, Jakow Trachtenberg resumed his work as a book publisher and he began publishing anti-Soviet pamphlets and books. In 1937, Jakow Trachtenberg published a book in Vienna where he predicted that Nazi Germany would get into a war with the Soviet Union, four years before the war actually took place in 1941. After Austria was invaded and annexed by Nazi Germany in the Anschluss in March 1938, Trachtenberg lived under the rule of Nazi Germany again. Jakow Trachtenberg was then arrested by the Nazis while in Vienna and was deported to a unknown concentration camp, but Jakow Trachtenberg sucesfully escaped from the concentration camp, and he ended up on the run for a long time escaping from Nazi authorities and from Nazi Germany, but somehow Jakow Trachtenberg ended up living in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia sometime before 1941. Jakow Trachtenberg lived in Yugoslavia in peace until Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy invaded and occupied Yugoslavia in April 1941.

## Infobox (person)

- **name**: Jakow Trachtenberg
- **image**: Jakow Trachtenberg jeune.jpg
- **caption**: Jakow Trachtenberg as photographed in 1915
- **birth name**: Jakow Georgyvich Trachtenberg
- **birth place**: Odessa, Russian Empire
 (modern-day Ukraine)
- **death place**: Zürich, Switzerland
- **known for**: Mathematician who developed and formulated the Trachtenberg system while being imprisoned himself in a Nazi concentration camp which he survived.
- **spouse**: Alisa Bredova
 (wife)
- **parents**: Georgy "Gersh" Trachtenberg
 (father)
 Rozaliya Gogish
 (mother)