PINYE KIRITSHANSKI

PINYE KIRITSHANSKI (1921-1986)

            He was a Soviet Yiddish poet, born in Malin (Malyn), Zhytomyr region, Ukraine. In 1931 he moved with his parents to Korostishev (Korostyshiv). Form 1934 he was in Kiev, where he graduated from a Jewish school, began to write poetry, and debuted in print with a poem in the children’s newspaper Zay greyt (Be ready!). From that point in time, he published poems in Shtern (Star) in Kharkov, Emes (Truth), Oktyaberl (Little October), Sovetishe literatur (Soviet literature), and Onheyb (Beginning), among other serials. In 1937 Zey greyt published an anthology, Kinder-shafung (Children’s creation), which included one of his poems. For several decades he worked in a factory. He served in the Red Army during WWII from June 1941, and he dedicated many poems to heroism in the war. He returned to Kiev in 1945 and went to work in a leather factory, but he did not cease publishing poems. In 1948 he published a cycle of poems in the Kiev journal Der shtern (The star). From 1961 he began publishing numerous poems in Sovetish heymland (Soviet homeland). His work also appeared in Horizontn (Horizons) and Yidish in lid (Yiddish in poetry) (Buenos Aires: Yoysef Lifshits Fund, 1967). His books include: Zunike shtamen, lider (Sunny roots, poems) (Moscow: Sovetski pisatel, 1981), 117 pp.

Sources: Horizontn, p. 531; Yankev Glatshteyn, In der velt mit yidish (The world with Yiddish) (New York, 1972), pp. 369-70.

Berl Cohen

[Additional information from: Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 485; 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. 339.]