SHMARYAHU NYEMIROVSKI (SAMARIO NEMIROVSKY)

SHMARYAHU NYEMIROVSKI (SAMARIO NEMIROVSKY) (b. 1884)

            He was born in Vinitse (Vinnytsa, Vinnytsya), Ukraine.  He received a Jewish and a general education.  In 1901 he left Russia and for a time traveled through Italy.  He studied philosophy and the dramatic arts at Naples University.  After returning to Russia in 1905, he was a pupil in Stanislavsky’s theatrical studio in Moscow.  He later lived in Geneva, Berne, and Zurich, Switzerland.  In 1913 he returned to Vinnytsa, where he spent the years of war, revolution, and pogroms against Jews in 1918-1919.  In those years he led a self-defense group which vigorously fought against the Ukrainian pogromists.  In 1919 he came to Paris, studied there at the Sorbonne, and started giving recitations and doing theater in Yiddish.  He began writing in Russian for Odesskie novosti (Odessa news) and later contributed to the Russian Jewish: Razsvet (Dawn) in St. Petersburg, Poslednie novosti (Latest news) in Paris, and others.  From 1926 he was writing in Yiddish for: Parizer bleter (Parisian leaves), Parizer haynt (Paris today), Arbeter-vort (Workers’ word), and Unzer vort (Our word) in Paris, among others.  In book form: Mayne zikhroynes (tipn fun amoliker alter heym) (My memoirs, types from the old country of bygone times), vol. 1 (Paris, 1958), 137 pp., vol. 2 (Paris, 1960), 160 pp, with a preface by the author (a third volume was due out soon thereafter).  He was last living in Asnières-sur-Seine, near Paris.

Sources: Biblyografishe yorbikher fun yivo (Bibliographic yearbooks from YIVO) (Warsaw, 1928), see index; L. Makovski, in Arbeter-vort (Paris) (March 7, 1959); M. Gotfrid, in Letste nayes (Tel Aviv) (June 12, 1959); Biblyografye fun yidishe bikher vegn khurbn un gvure (Bibliography of Yiddish books concerning the Holocaust and heroism) (New York, 1962), p. 164; The Jewish Chronicle (London) (August 25, 1960); La Terre Retrouvée (Paris) 56 (1962).

Khayim Leyb Fuks