FAYVL (FELIKS) GARFINKEL

FAYVL (FELIKS) GARFINKEL (1896-August 1944)

            He was born in Lodz, Poland, into an intellectual workers’ household.  He graduated from the Russian-Hebrew high school of Kovner and Berkman.  He worked as a private tutor of German, a commercial traveler, and a business employee.  For a time he was a teacher of Jewish literature in an evening course at the Medem School in Lodz.  He was living in Lodz until WWII, subsequently in the Lodz ghetto.  He was a member of the writers’ group which gathered around Miriam Ulinover in the Lodz ghetto.  His first publication was a poem in German in Die Jugend (Youth) (Berlin, 1913).  He later published poems and articles in: Der yidishe zhurnalist (The Jewish journalist) (Lodz, 1919); In der shtil (Quietly) (1919); Gezangen (Songs) (1919-1920); Der gezang (The song); Vegn (Pathways); Di fayl (The arrow); Lodzger tageblat (Lodz daily newspaper) (1930); Nayer folksblat (New people’s newspaper) (1937); and Grine bleter (Fresh pages) (1939).  Among his books: Likht un shotn (Light and shadow) (Lodz, 1920), 94 pp.; Di klole, dramatishe poeme (The curse, dramatic poem) (Lodz, 1923), 28 pp.; and Bizn sof fun veg, poeme (Until the end of the road, a poem) (Lodz, 1937), 67 pp.  Influenced by German and Russian romantic poets, he wrote in the style of the Romantic school.  In August 1944, during the liquidation of the Lodz ghetto, he was deported to Auschwitz and murdered there.

Sources: Arno Nadel, in Die Jugend (Berlin, 1913); Pe d’Es (Perets Markish), in Literarishe bleter (Warsaw) 5 (1924); B. Shnaper, in Foroys (Warsaw) (January 4, 1938); Y. Shpigel, in Dos naye lebn (Lodz) (August 31, 1946); B. Mark, Umgekumene shrayber fun di getos un lagern (Murdered writers from the ghettos and camps) (Warsaw, 1954), pp. 161-63; Unzer lodz (Our Lodz) (Buenos Aires, 1954), see index; Kh. L. Fuks, in Fun noentn over (New York) 3 (1957).