DINA (NADEZHDA) YAFE

DINA (NADEZHDA) YAFE (d. 1943)

            She was born in Vilna, the daughter of Dr. Gershon Gershoni.  She graduated from the humanities faculty of Vilna University and completed her doctorate in history (1936).  She worked on a full series of historical materials and documents on Jewish history in Poland and Lithuania, and from her research she published: “Der pogrom in dolhinov in 1886” (The pogrom in Daŭhinava in 1886), Di tsayt (The times) in Vilna (March 25, 1937; April 1, 1937; April 4, 1937); “Der kamf arum der tsavoe fun a vilner yidishn filantrop fun onheyb 18tn y”h” (The struggle around a will from a Vilna Jewish philanthropist at the beginning of the eighteenth century), Di tsayt (October 1937; August 5, 1938); “Yidn in oyfshtand fun 1863” (Jews in the uprising of 1863), Unzer tog (Our day) in Vilna (January 29, 1939); “A yidisher student in vilne (bernard morgenshtern), an onhenger fun kanarskis ideyen” (A Jewish student in Vilna, Bernard Morgenshtern, a follower of Kanarsky’s ideas), Unzer tog (February 26, 1939); “A yid berosh fun a poyerim-bunt in lite onheyb 19tn y”h” (A Jew at the head of a peasant rebellion in Lithuania at the beginning of the nineteenth century), Historishe shriftn fun yivo (Historical writings from YIVO) (Vilna-Paris) 3 (1939), pp. 780-86; “Der atentat fun yidishn revolutsyoner molodyetski in 1880” (The assassination of the Jewish revolutionary Molodetsky in 1880), Idishe shtime (Jewish voice) in Kovno (July 26, 1940), an article concerning Molodetsky’s assassination published earlier in Tsukunft (Future) in New York (January 1938); “Der blut-bilbl in shavlyan erev-peysekh 1861” (The blood libel in Šiaulėnai on Passover eve 1861), Idishe shtime 6544 (1940).  He also published in Der emes (The truth) in Kovno (1941).  For the pedagogical writings brought out by YIVO, she penned the work: “Di ershte yidishe froyen in kamf farn pedagogishn baruf” (The first Jewish women in the fight for the teaching profession)—the manuscript may be found in the YIVO archives in New York.  During the Nazi occupation, she worked sorting Yiddish books and archival materials which the Nazis amassed in the YIVO building in Vilna.  Together with Z. Kalmanovitsh and Dr. H. Gordon, she worked on a translation of Falkovitsh’s grammar of the Yiddish language and Reuben Fahn’s Sefer hakaraim (The book of Karaites) into German (copies of the translation can be found in the YIVO archives, New York).  During the liquidation of the Vilna ghetto in September 1943, she was dispatched to Treblinka.

Sources: Historishe shriftn fun yivo (Vilna-Paris) 3 (1939), see index; Sh. Katsherginski, in Khurbn vilne (The Holocaust in Vilna) (New York, 1947), p. 197.

Leyzer Ran