Salomon Reinmann

REINMANN, SALOMON (c. 1815–c. 1880), traveler. A native of Galicia, he left his home country in the 1840s and traveled to Burma, where he supplied food to the British army. He amassed a great fortune but soon lost it, and was wounded when involved in battle, losing one eye and part of his left hand. Later he wandered around the Orient as a merchant, then settled in Cochin. Finally he returned to Europe, homeless and without hope, and died in Vienna. While in Austria, he was urged by Peretz *Smolenskin to write down the impressions and observations gained during his many years of travel. His Masot Shelomo be-Ereẓ Hodu, Birman ve-Sinim was edited and annotated after his death by Wolf *Schur of Warsaw and appeared in 1884. Though a rather uncritical account of countries and people, Jews and others, with many inaccuracies, the book is an important source of information on Jewish life in *Bombay (especially on the *Bene Israel), *Cochin, *Calcutta, *Burma, and other communities.

Sources: Encyclopaedia Judaica. © 2008 The Gale Group. All Rights Reserved.