BEATRICE GOLDSMITH

BEATRICE GOLDSMITH (April 17, 1915-1950)

            She was born in the Bronx, New York, and was a pupil at the Sholem-Aleykhem Folkshul 15, where she began to study at age eleven (she knew Yiddish from her home).  She began writing Yiddish poems when she was twelve, and she published them in the school magazine and later in Kinder-zhurnal (Children’s journal) in New York as well.  Her English-language poems appeared in the journal Poetry and in the anthology Trial Balances and elsewhere.  She also wrote prose, and her essay “Jews in American Literature” is a document about the thinking of American Jewish intellectual youth.  After her death, her family collected her literary bequest and published it in an anthology entitled Di velt vert klener, lider un poemes (The world grows smaller, songs and poems) (New York, 1953), 48 pp. in Yiddish and 96 pp. in English, with prefaces by Y. Zilberberg, Edna Kagan, and Dr. Israel Knox.

Source: Shmuel Niger, in Tog-morgn-zhurnal (New York) (March 7, 1954).