DOVID KURLAND

DOVID KURLAND

            He was a Soviet Yiddish literary critic and scholar. In the 1920s he began working in the Jewish section of the Byelorussian Academy of Sciences. He wrote articles on literary criticism and folklore. In the 1930s he moved to Kiev, where he worked at the Institute of Jewish Culture. He left for the front in 1941 and died there in battle against the Germans.[1] He placed work in: Afn shprakhfront (On the language front) (1933); Literarisher zamlbukh (Literary anthology) (Minsk: Byelorussian Academy of Sciences, 1934), a bibliographical-critical report on the literature of Perets Markish; Visnshaft un revolutsye (Science and revolution) (Kiev) 2 (1935), a long article on Dovid Bergelson; Sovetishe literatur (Soviet literature); Shtern (Star); Oktyabr (October); and he edited Di ershte yidishe arbeter-dikhter (The first Yiddish labor poet) (Minsk: Central People’s Publishers, USSR, 1931), 128 pp. Together with Moyshe Hoder and E. Koptshits, he co-edited: Literatur, khrestomatye farn 6tn shulyor (Literature, reader for the sixth school year) (Minsk: Central People’s Publishers, USSR, 1930), 418 pp.; Literatur, lernbukh farn 6tn un 7tn shulyor (Literature, textbook for the sixth and seventh school years) (Moscow-Minsk: Central People’s Publishers, USSR, 1931), 276 pp., second edition (Moscow-Minsk, 1931), 216 pp.; with Sonye Rokhkind, Di haynttsaytike proletarishe yidishe dikhtung in amerike (Contemporary proletarian Yiddish poetry in America) (Minsk: Byelorussian State Publishers, 1932), 199 pp.; with M. Hoder, Dovid bergelson in shul (Dovid Bergelson in school) (Minsk: Byelorussian State Publishers, 1933), 248 pp.; with Zelik Akselrod, Atake (Attack) (Minsk: Byelorussian State Publishers, 1934), 111 pp.

Sources: Chone Shmeruk, comp., Pirsumim yehudiim babrit-hamoatsot, 1917-1961 (Jewish publications in the Soviet Union, 1917-1961) (Jerusalem, 1961), see index; Y. Nusinov, in Eynikeyt (Moscow) (August 5, 1942); A. Pomerants, Di sovetishe haruge malkhes (The [Jewish writers] murdered by the Soviet government) (Buenos Aires, 1961), p. 266.

Berl Cohen

[Additional information from: Chaim Beider, Leksikon fun yidishe shrayber in ratn-farband (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers in the Soviet Union), ed. Boris Sandler and Gennady Estraikh (New York: Congress for Jewish Culture, Inc., 2011), p. 332.]

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[1] According to other sources, he was arrested in 1937 and died in prison.