YOYSEF KLENITSKI (JOSEPH KLENICKY)

YOYSEF KLENITSKI (JOSEPH KLENICKY) (September 18, 1897-July 18, 1978)

            He was born in Brisk (Brest), Lithuania.  From 1918 he was an active Communist in Poland.  In 1920 he departed for Soviet Russia, quickly left the party, and spent several years in prison.  He lived in Minsk and Moscow and worked in factories.  In 1963 he wrote an open letter (in Samizdat) to Nikita Khrushchev about anti-Semitism.  In 1971 he came to Israel and there published his apologetic work about Jewish writers and leaders in the USSR: Aza iz geven zeyer goyrl, kaze haya goralam (Such was their fate), in Yiddish with parallel Hebrew translation by Y. Berkman (Tel Aviv, 1977), 167 pp.  He left (with Sholem Rozenfeld) ready for publication his memoirs about Jewish writers in Soviet Russia.  His pen name was Yoshke.  He died in Tel Aviv.

Source: Sh. Kants, in Letste nayes (Tel Aviv) (October 21, 1977).

Ruvn Goldberg