MORTKHE KHOSID

MORTKHE KHOSID (February 28, 1909-November 1988)

            He was born in Sekuran (Secureni), Bessarabia.  He received both a Jewish and a secular education.  In 1926 he graduated from a high school in Sekuran.  Over the years 1927-1930, he was a student at the teachers’ institute (under the leadership of Professor Khayes) in Vienna, and thereafter until 1944 he worked as a teacher in a Hebrew-Finnish school in Finland.  He spent 1944-1950 in Sweden.  He was director of cultural work among the Holocaust survivors in the Jewish community of Stockholm.  In 1948 he served as the delegate from Sweden and Denmark at the World Jewish Culture Congress in New York.  From 1950 he worked as a teacher at Jewish schools in Canada.  He began writing in his youth.  In 1928 he took part in a literary competition run by the magazine Unzer tsayt (Our time) in Kishinev, with a story entitled “Teg un nekht” (Days and nights), for which he received first prize.  From that point forward, he placed poems, stories, and articles in (aside from Unzer tsayt): Tshernovitser bleter (Czernowitz pages); Inzl (Island) in Bucharest; Oyfgang (Arise) in Sighet-Marmației; Literarishe bleter (Literary leaves) in Warsaw; Der shpigl (The mirror) in Buenos Aires; Idishe bilder (Jewish images) in Riga; Yidish (Yiddish) in London; and Idishe folkstsaytung (Jewish people’s newspaper) in Brazil; among others.  In Hebrew he wrote for: Peredot (Departures) in Kishinev; Haolam (The world) in London; and others.  He was a member (together with Shloyme Vaysman) of the editorial board that published Y. Y. Sigal’s Letste lider (Last poems) (Montreal, 1955).  His books include: Doyres shrayen mikh ariber (Generations scream out loud at me) (Montreal, 1969), 141 pp.; A shotn trogt mayn kroyn (A shadow carries my crown) (Montreal, 1975), 149 pp.; Shtoyb un eybikeyt (Dust and eternity) (Montreal, 1981), 153 pp.  He died in Montreal.

Sources: M. Grosman, in Literarishe bleter (Warsaw) (February 19, 1934); B. Shnabel, in Oyfgang (Sighet-Marmației) (May-June 1934); Y. B. in Bikher-nayes (Warsaw) (March 1938); L. Kreditor, in Loshn un lebn (London) (September 1947); Rokhl Korn, in Keneder odler (Montreal) (February 19, 1951); Sh. Slutski, Avrom reyzen-biblyografye (Avrom Reyzen bibliography) (New York, 1956), no. 4884.

[Additional information from: Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 272.]