SHMUEL-YITSKHOK KOZINITS (ISAAC KOZINITZ)

SHMUEL-YITSKHOK KOZINITS (ISAAC KOZINITZ) (March 1891-March 23, 1956)

            He was a playwright, born in Vitebsk Province.  In 1900 he moved with his parents to Riga.  He attended religious elementary school and a secular school.  He worked as a typesetter.  He served in the Russian military.  After the October Revolution, he joined the Red Army.  He was active in the Bund and contributed to its publications.  In 1922 he emigrated to the United States.  In addition to dramas, he published here and there a poem or a story in: Unzer tsayt (Our time) (1918), Kultur un arbet (Culture and labor) (1920), the anthology Afn shvel (At the threshold) (1921)—all in Riga; Yidishe shriftn (Yiddish writings) in Warsaw; Yidishe kultur (Jewish culture), Zamlungen (Collections), and Amerikaner (American), among others, in New York.  In book form he published: Afn taykh, a drame in 5 akten (On the river, a drama in five acts) (Riga, 1921), 65 pp., which had enormous success on the Yiddish stage in Russia and Poland and later in Buenos Aires; a collection of plays entitled Tsvishn veltn, dramen (Amid worlds, dramas) (New York, 1925), 122 pp.; Fayern in nakht, dramen (Fires at night, dramas) (New York, 1939), 223 pp.; Bay der dvine (By the Dvina River), a novel (New York: IKUF, 1957), 360 pp.  Kozinits “is far more a writer for the theater,” wrote Y. Botoshanski, “than his is a litterateur.  The literary value of all of his plays is small, their theatrical worth is immense.  There vivid people in Kozinits’s plays and powerful people.”  He died in New York.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 3; Zalmen Zilbertsvayg, Leksikon fun yidishn teater (Handbook of the Yiddish theater), vol. 4 (New York, 1963); M. Olgin, in Hamer (New York) (March 1926); Y. Botoshanski, in Di prese (Buenos Aires) (July 26, 1939); Moyshe kats bukh (Volume for Moyshe Kats) (New York, 1963), pp. 267-69; Yeshurin archive, YIVO (New York).

Yekhezkl Lifshits