Feiner was born in 1885 in
Kraków. He served as a defense attorney in political trials and was active in the Association of Socialist Lawyers. In 1939, he was sent to the
Bereza Kartuska Prison for six weeks. After the outbreak of
World War II with the
German invasion of Poland, the
Soviet Union also invaded on September 17, as part of the
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between
Nazi Germany and
Soviet Union. Feiner was caught in the Soviet part of occupied Poland, was arrested by the
NKVD and spent several months in a Soviet prison in
Lida, near
Wilno. Despite the fact that before the war on several occasions he had defended
Polish Communists in court as an attorney, and that he had belonged to a
socialist organization (the
General Jewish Labour Bund in Poland), the Soviets authorities charged him with being a "fascist" and a "counter revolutionary" Feiner also served as a guide for the Polish courier
Jan Karski inside the
Warsaw Ghetto (they both crossed into the ghetto through the Warsaw sewers). Karski asked Feiner what prominent American and British Jews should do. "Tell the Jewish leaders," Feiner said, "that ... they must find the strength and courage to make sacrifices no other statesmen have ever had to make, sacrifices as painful as the fate of my dying people, and as unique." Karski also took Feiner's report to the Polish-Jewish political leaders
Szmul Zygielbojm and
Ignacy Schwarzbart, who were serving on the Polish National Council of the
Polish Government-in-Exile in London. The report described the deportation and murder of Jews in Poland, including a detailed report on
Chełmno extermination camp, and gave the estimated number dead, as of May 1942, at 700,000 (the actual number was already much higher). Feiner's instructions to Zygielbojm were to cease mere protests and organize retaliatory bombing, leafleting and execution of Germans captured by the Allies, in response to the Nazi
Holocaust. The description of the condition of Jews in German-occupied Poland and Feiner's instructions threw Zygielbojm into depression since he knew that the Allies would be unwilling to help After the
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the liquidation of the ghetto by the Germans, Feiner tried desperately to help those who were sent to slave labor camps. he died in Lublin soon afterward, on February 22. Even while in the hospital he maintained relationships with his friends and fellow political activists and participated in discussions of the future of the Bund in Poland. He is buried in the main row of the
Okopowa Street Jewish Cemetery in
Warsaw (quarter 12). ==References==