SHIMEN HEYLIK

SHIMEN HEYLIK (b. 1917)

            He was born in Lodz, Poland, the son of a rabbi.  He studied in religious elementary school and yeshiva.  Over the years 1935-1938, he was a student at “Makhon lemada” (Institute of Research) in Warsaw, later a student of painting at an art school in Paris.  From 1946 he was living in Canada, working as a teacher and later director of the Y. L. Peretz schools in Winnipeg and Calgary.  He began writing for Di prese (The press) in Buenos Aires where he lived for two years during WWII.  He published travel impressions and pedagogical articles in Tsukunft (Future) in New York, Der veg (The way) in Mexico City, and Keneder odler (Canadian eagle) in Montreal, among other serials.  In book form: Vegn psikhologishe un pedagogishe problemen in der shul (On psychological and pedagogical issues in the school) (Winnipeg, 1951), 32 pp.; Blimelekh (Little flowers), for the first and second classes in school (Winnipeg, 1955), 48 pp.; Dos lebedike vort (The living word), a textbook (Winnipeg, 1974), 396 pp.

Source: Kh. L. Fuks, Hundert yor yidishe un hebreishe literatur in kanade (A century of Yiddish and Hebrew literature in Canada) (Montreal, 1980).

Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 218.