TSVI KHOLODENKO

TSVI KHOLODENKO (b. 1896)

            He was born in Manzir, Romania.  He assisted his father in his blacksmith shop.  He was an autodidact.  Haim Nachman Bialik saw his notebooks of poetry in Odessa and offered him strong encouragement.  He settled in Bender and opened a “cheder metukan” (improved religious elementary school) there.  After WWII he was arrested by the Soviets for “Zionist activities” and dispatched to the Vorkuta labor camp where he died.  He wrote numerous poems, but published few, in the daily newspaper Unzer tsayt (Our time) in Kishinev (1922-1938) and in other Yiddish literary collections.

Source: Y. Urman, in Besaraber yidn (Tel Aviv) (January 1983).

Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 313.