Leksikon fun der Nayer Yidisher Literatur

לעקסיקאָן פֿון דער נײַער ייִדישער ליטעראַטור

A Soviet author of poetry and prose, she was born into a poor family in Radomyśl, Ukraine. She was raised in a children’s home and went to work at a young age in a shoe factory. She graduated from a factory school. She debuted in the world of literature in 1928, publishing poetry in Yiddish publications in Kiev, Kharkov, Minsk, and Moscow, and she contributed to various collections, such as Komsomol (Communist Youth League) publications. She was a member of the Kiev literary group “Yunge Gvardye” (Young Guard). Her love and landscape lyrics were tinged with Ukraine’s natural countryside. She brought out two poetry collections prior to the outbreak of WWII (see below). During the war years, she lived in Bashkiria (Bashkortoshan). When she returned to Kiev, she had written a great deal but published little, because the opportunities to put her work into print in Yiddish were extremely limited. When in 1949 the persecutions of Jewish intellectuals began, she too was arrested. After being “rehabilitated” (i.e., exonerated) in 1956, she returned home and first gained the chance to publish her work in 1961, when the journal Sovetish Heymland (Soviet Homeland) appeared in Moscow. She published poetry and brought out in Moscow a poetry collection, and in her poetry cycles also appeared in Sovetish Heymland. Many of her poems were translated into Russian and Ukrainian. Of a broadly conceived work of prose concerning her childhood, entitled Nokh der goldener pave (After the golden peacock), she apparently only published a small fragment. She died in Kiev.

Among her books: In iberuf (Calling back and forth), poems (Kharkov-Kiev, 1934), 262 pp.; Likhtike stezhkes (Bright trails), poems (Kiev, 1940), 90 pp.; a poetry cycle of hers appeared in Horizontn (Horizons) (Moscow, 1965), pp. 24-35; Goldener Bleter-fal (Golden falling Newspaper), poetry (Moscow, 1978). Her work was included as well in: Komsomolye (Communist Youth) (Kiev, 1938), Shlakhtn (Battles) (Kharkov-Kiev, 1932); and Litkomyug (Literary Communist Youth) (Kharkov-Kiev, 1933).