KHAVE ROZENFARB (CHAWA, CHAVA ROSENFARB)

KHAVE ROZENFARB (CHAWA, CHAVA ROSENFARB) (February 9, 1923-January 30, 2011)

            She was born in Lodz.  She completed a secular Jewish school and a Polish Jewish high school.  She survived the Lodz ghetto, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen.  From 1945 she spent five years in Brussels, Belgium, where she worked as a teacher in a Jewish school.  From 1950 she was in Montreal and there she graduated from the Jewish teachers’ seminary.  She wrote a number of poems and part of her novel Der boym fun lebn (The tree of life) in the ghetto.  In 1946 she debuted in print with “Di balade fun nekhtikn vald” (The ballad of yesterday’s forest) in Tsukunft (Future) in New York.  She contributed poetry, chapters of her ghetto novel, travel narratives, and literary articles to: Opatoshu and Leivick’s Zamlbikher (Collections), Svive (Environs), Fraye arbeter shtime (Free voice of labor), Unzer tsayt (Our time), Tsukunft, and Veker (Alarm) in New York; Di goldene keyt (The golden chain), Heymish (Familiar), Letste nayes (Latest news), and Lebnsfragn (Life issues) in Tel Aviv; Kiem (Existence) and Unzer shtime (Our voice) in Paris; and the like.  Her poetry also appeared in the anthologies: Unzer lid (Our poem) (Brussels, 1949); Mir zaynen do (We are here) (New York, 1948); and Yidish lodzh (Jewish Lodz) (Melbourne, 1974), with music.  Her work includes: Di balade fun nekhtikn vald (London: Narod Press, 1947), 56 pp., later edition (Montreal: H. Hershman, 1948), 64 pp.; Dos lid fun yidishn kelner abram (The song of the Jewish waiter, Abram) (London: Moyshe Oyved, 1948), 87 pp., second edition (with additional ghetto poems and fragments of a diary) (Montreal, 1948), 107 pp.; Der foygl fun geto, tragedye in dray aktn (The bird of the ghetto, a tragedy in three acts), concerning the Vilna ghetto (Montreal: H. Morgentaler, 1958), 181 pp., staged in Israel by Habima; Aroys fun gan eydn (Out of the Garden of Eden), poetry and ballads (Tel Aviv: Perets Publ., 1965), 186 pp.; Der boym fun lebn, a novel about the Lodz ghetto (Tel Aviv: Hamenorah, 1972), 3 vols.; Botshani, roman (Bociany, a novel) (Tel Aviv: Perets Publ., 1983), 2 vols.  Her work also appeared in the anthology Kanadish (Canadian) (Buenos Aires, 1974).  In 1979 she received the Manger Prize, and other prizes followed.  “As for her subject matter, her spoken word, and her resonant verse,” wrote Yankev Glatshteyn, “Chava Rosenfarb demonstrates that the ideas and thoughts of contemporary man, of contemporary woman are not alien to her, for she can weigh an idea in the first verses and bring it all the way to the end….  [However,] she feels great comfort in the simplicity of older Yiddish poetry, even in her love poems.”  “This work [Der boym fun lebn],” noted Y. Yanasovitsh, “suffers from redundancy, excessive length…but a work of art is judged according to the highest line to which it rises….  There is then no doubt that Chava Rosenfarb’s novel is a work of greatness.”  She died in Lethbridge, Alberta.

Sources: Arn Leyeles, in Tog (New York) (May 3, 1948); A. Mukdoni, in Amerikaner (New York) (October 29, 1948); Der Lebediger, in Tog-morgn-zhurnal (New York) (January 18, 1958); Yisroel Rabinovitsh, in Keneder odler (Montreal) (November 2, 1959); Yankev Glatshteyn, Af greyte temes (On ready themes) (New York: CYCO, 1967); Shiye Rapoport, Rizn un karlikes unter eyn dakh (Giants and midgets under one roof) (Melbourne, 1969), pp. 207-12; Yitskhok Yanasovitsh, Penemer un nemen (Faces and names), vol. 2: Yidishe prozayikers nokh der tsveyter velt-milkhome (Yiddish prose writers after WWII) (Buenos Aires-Tel Aviv, 1977), pp. 270-95.

Khayim Leyb Fuks