PAULA R.

PAULA R. (September 1876-October 1941)

            The pen name of Perl Prilutski (Prylucki), wife of Noyekh Prylucki, she was born in Warsaw, into a well-to-do family.  She received an assimilated education, graduating from high school while at the same time studying music for two years in special courses offered at the Warsaw Conservatory.  After marrying her first husband, she ran a wide-open home and an artistic salon.  She befriended Ester-Rokhl Kaminska who would later appear in stage in a play written by her.  She began writing in 1904 in Polish, and under the influence of Noyekh Prylucki, whom she married in 1908, she switched to Yiddish and debuted in print with a poem in prose form entitled “Dos kvelekhl” (The little spring) in the literary supplement of Veg (Path) in Warsaw (spring 1906).  She went on to published several dozen poems and prose works there, sometimes in blank verse, and she also wrote poems, stories, dramas, and satires in: the anthology Goldene funken (Golden sparks), Moment (Moment), and other publications.  Her plays Di yerushe (The inheritance), Eyne fun yene (One of those), and Di trayhayt (Devotion) were produced in Warsaw, St. Petersburg, and New York.  Di yerushe was also performed in a Russian translation.  In book format: Trayhayt, a drama in one act (Warsaw), 28 pp.; Der malekh un der sotn, poeme (The angel and the devil, a poem) (Warsaw, 1908), 16 pp.; Dramen (Plays) (Warsaw: Nayer, 1912), 78 pp.; Dramen (Warsaw: Nayer, 1913), 17 pp.; Eyne fun yene, drame in fir aktn (One of them, a drama in four acts) (Warsaw: Nayer, 1914), 104 pp.  She translated In’m groysen tumel (In a great racket) by Aage Madelung (Warsaw: M. Gitlin, 1918), 188 pp.  When the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, she and her husband escaped to Vilna.  She was later confined in the Vilna ghetto and was murdered at Ponar in October 1941.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 2; Zalmen Zilbertsvayg, Leksikon fun yidishn teater (Handbook of the Yiddish theater), vol. 3 (New York, 1959); Lilyen Aba (B. Rivkin), in Tsayt (New York) (December 16, 1921); Y. Entin, in Idishe poetn (Yiddish poets), part 1 (New York, 1927), p. 295; Ezra Korman, Yidishe dikhterins (Yiddish poetesses) (Chicago: L. M. Shteyn, pp. 59-61; E. Almi, in Poylishe yid, annual (New York, 1944); M. Balberishki, in Dos naye lebn (Warsaw) 9 (1945); Avrom Sutzkever, Fun vilner geto (From the Vilna ghetto) (Paris, 1946); “Yizker” (Remembrance), Yidishe shriftn (Lodz) (1946); Shmerke Katsherginski, in Tsukunft (New York) (September 1946); Katsherginski, Khurbn vilne (The destruction of Vilna) (New York, 1947), p. 204; B. Kutsher, Geven amol varshe (As Warsaw once was) (Paris, 1955), see index; Dr. A. Mukdoni, In varshe un in lodzh (In Warsaw and in Lodz) (Buenos Aires, 1955), p. 235; Pinkes varshe (Buenos Aires) 1 (1955), p. 830.

Leyb Vaserman