ARN HELMOND

ARN HELMOND

            He was a poet, teacher, and the father of the poets Moyshe and Shmuel Helmond.  He was born in Zhitomir (Zhytomyr), Ukraine.  He was a teacher of Yiddish and Hebrew and an active community leader in Kiev, Odessa, Zhytomyr, and in the town of Volodars'k-Volyns'kyy (Kutuzovo), Zhytomyr district. A follower of Yitskhok-Leybush Perets, he devoted his life completely to organizing children’s homes for Jewish children made homeless by war, and for them he wrote a volume of children’s poetry. In the 1920s he was one of the founders of children’s homes for abandoned Jewish children, wrote poems for them, and composed music to accompany them. Some of these were published.

            His published work includes: Matses (Matzohs) (Moscow, 1917); Feter shneyer (Old Man Winter) (Moscow, 1917); Shneyelekh (Snowflakes) (Moscow, 1917)—all 4 pp.  He also contributed an article, “Perets un dos yidishe kind” (Perets and the Jewish child) to the anthology Y.-l. perets (Y.-L. Perets) (Zhitomir, 1921); and was editor of the collection Lidelekh (Little poems), material for kindergarteners and children’s homes (Zhitomir, 1921), 18 pp.  He was in addition the compiler (with M. Bernshteyn) of the school anthology for children: Tsu leninen (For Lenin) (Moscow: Central People’s Publishers, 1926), 314 and 9 pp.  He also wrote: A zamlung fun pyonerishe lider mit notn (A collection of pioneer songs with musical notes) (Minsk: Byelorussian State Publishers, 1927), 32 pp., with Z. Vitenzon.  Further details remain unknown.

Sources: Z. Ratner and Y. Kvitko, Dos yidishe bukh in f. s. r. r. far di yorn 1917-1921 (The Yiddish book in the USSR for the years 1917-1921) (Kiev, 1930), see index; Biblyografishe yorbikher fun yivo (Bibliographic yearbooks from YIVO) (Warsaw, 1928), p. 348.

[Additional information from: Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 222; 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. 125.]