SALVADOR BORZHES (BORGES)

SALVADOR BORZHES (BORGES) (May 5, 1900-1974)

The adopted name of Betsalel Borodin(i), he was a Soviet Yiddish prose author, born in the town of Rozhyshche, Ukraine.  From his youth, he joined the revolutionary movement and was forced to wander through various countries. For many years he lived in Brazil, where from 1928 he began publishing stories and essays. He came to the Soviet Union in 1930 and contributed as a representative of progressive literature in South America in the work of the second international conference of revolutionary writers which took place in Kharkov. From that point forward, he was a Soviet citizen. In 1935 he settled in Birobidzhan, where he worked for the local Yiddish press and radio. Over the years 1937-1939, he was purged, and after being freed he returned to Birobidzhan. In the 1960s, he published stories and essays in the journal Sovetish heymland (Soviet homeland) (Moscow) and Folks-shtime (People’s voice) (Warsaw. He died in Birobdzhan.

He contributed to Morgn frayhayt (Morning freedom) as well as other serial publications.  Among his books: Es flatert di royte fon (The red banner flutters) (Kharkov, 1932), 79 pp.; In okupirtn volin (In occupied Volhynia), jottings (Kharkov-Kiev, 1934), 104 pp.; Rio de zhaneyro (Rio de Janeiro), a novel (Kiev, 1936), 252 pp.  His work also was included in the anthology Yidishe avtonome gegnt (The Jewish autonomous region) (Khabarovsk, 1960). 

Sources: N. Fridman, in Eynikeyt (Moscow) (May 17, 1947); Biblyografisher arkhiv fun der yidisher-sovetisher literatur (Bibliographical archive of Soviet Yiddish literature) (New York: YIVO).

[Additional information from: Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 59; and Chaim Beider, Leksikon fun yidishe shrayber in ratn-farband (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers in the Soviet Union), ed. Boris Sandler and Gennady Estraikh (New York: Congress for Jewish Culture, Inc., 2011), p. 38.]