YANKL-ZALMEN YAGODA

YANKL-ZALMEN YAGODA (b. 1898)

            He was born in Rovne (Rovno), Volhynia, into a family of klezmer musicians.  He studied in religious primary school, public school, and later graduated from a commercial school.  Over the years 1923-1926, he studied law at the Wszechnica, the Polish university in Warsaw, and then he returned to Rovno where he was one of the founders of a string of Volhynian Yiddish periodicals and secretary of the Jewish literary association of Volhynia.  He began writing stories in Russian, later switching to Yiddish and publishing articles in Voliner vokh (Volhynia week) in Rovno (1926).  He later contributed to Voliner shtime (Voice of Volhynia), a weekly newspaper, later a daily, of which he was editor and in which he published serially the novel Di zindike shtot (The sinful city).  He edited the literary collection Eygns (One’s own) (Rovno, 1928).  He also wrote under the pen name: Yankele Rovner.  There has been no information about him since WWII.

Sources: Zalmen reysen-arkhiv (Zalmen Reyzen archive) (YIVO, New York); Rovne, sefer zikaron (Rovno, remembrance book) (Tel Aviv, 1956), p. 266.

Khayim Leyb Fuks