Thursday 29 May 2014

FROYM AYZIKOVITSH

FROYM AYZIKOVITSH (EPHRAIM AYSIKOWITCHI) (October 15, 1901-March 12, 1974)
He was poet and storyteller, born in Leovo (Leova), Bessarabia, into a poor family.  He studied in religious school; he was employed in a shop as a youngster, and later he became a factory worker.  At age twelve he moved to Odessa, later moving on to Kishinev, where he worked by day and studied by night.  In 1919 he sat for his baccalaureate examinations.  He studied medicine at Bucharest University, and from 1927 he was a practicing physician.  He was active among the left Labor Zionists.  During WWII he served as a military doctor in Transnistria.  Having survived the war, he returned to Bucharest in 1946, and in 1957 made aliya to Israel.  After the war he began publishing stories and poetry in Yiddish periodicals in Romania.  Among his books: Tunkl un likht (Darkness and light), poetry (Bucharest, 1948); Afn veg, lider (On the road, poems) (Bucharest, 1950), 78 pp.; Shpurn, af di khurves fun der yidisher besarabye (Footprints, in the ruins of Jewish Bessarabia) (Tel Aviv, 1958), 44 pp.; Lider (Poems) (Tel Aviv: Puli, 1962), 255 pp.; Vi andersh, nekhtn un haynt (Like others, yesterday and today), stories (Bnei-Brak, 1967), 266 pp., containing fragments of a novel; S’iz mir bashert, lider (Destined for me, poems) (Bnei-Brak, 1969), 50 pp.  He also wrote stories, published in Ikuf-bleter (Pages from IKUF) (Bucharest, 1948).

Source: Y. Horovits, in Ikuf-bleter (Bucharest), no. 69 (1949); information from Ayzikovitsh’s daughter Rokhl Levin; Pekelman-Fortuna, in Undzer bleter (Tel Aviv) (December 1960); Kh. Slutski-Kestin, in Fray yisroel (Tel Aviv) (November 1969).

Reuven Goldberg

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