B. SERENI

B. SERENI (b. November 10, 1892)

            The pen name of Dov Sriloviten, he was born in Ungvár (Uzhgorod, Uzhhorod), Czechoslovakia [now in Ukraine], the son of an artisan.  He studied in yeshiva and in a secular high school.  He served in the Austro-Hungarian army, initially as a soldier, later as a non-commissioned officer.  From 1918 he was held for two years in Italian captivity.  Starting in 1915 he wrote for a variety of Yiddish periodicals.  In 1920 he edited the Hungarian Jewish newspaper Zsidó néplap (Jewish people’s newspaper).  From 1924 he edited an annual almanac in Hungarian.  He published Der nekhtiker tog (Not a chance), “a comedy in three acts, by B. Sereni, Izhorod, Czechoslovakia” (45 pp.), and he was the author of three other plays: A modner rebe (A nutty rebbe), Dos naye tsil (The new goal), and Di khashmenoim (The Hasmonians), which were staged in Czechoslovakia and Transylvania.  He also translated Yankev Gordin’s Mirele Efros into Hungarian, and it was performed on the Hungarian stage.

Source: Zalmen Zilbertsvayg, Leksikon fun yidishn teater (Handbook of the Yiddish theater), vol. 2 (New York, 1934).