HENEKH SHVEDIK

HENEKH SHVEDIK (March 4, 1914-October 11, 1942)

            He was a poet, born in Babruysk, Byelorussia. His father, burdened with children (Henekh the youngest), worked in a forestry office. After graduating from a seven-year school, he left Babruysk with his older brother and traveled to Birobidzhan and worked there on a collective farm; he wrote poems at the time dedicated to Birobidzhan. After a tragic accident in which his brother was killed, he returned to Byelorussia and graduated in Minsk from a local workers’ faculty (Arbfak), and he later studied in the literature department of the Minsk Pedagogical Institute. In 1934 his first collection of poetry, Start, lider (Take-off, poems), was published in Minsk. The next year he brought out a poem for children entitled Undzer dzhim (Our Jim), in which he celebrated the life of a fellow from Africa. The theme of the poem was such that in every era it would be translated into Russian, Byelorussian, and other languages. Especially warmly received was Shvedik’s book Lider (Poetry), which appeared in 1939. After graduating from the Institute, he worked for a lengthy period of time on the editorial board of the newspaper Pyoner Belarusy (Byelorussian pioneer), later becoming a contributor to the institute of language and literature at the Academy of Sciences. After the liquidation of Yiddish schools in the Soviet Union, he became a teacher of Russian language and literature. When the war came to Minsk, he was evacuated with his wife Betye and other writers to Uzbekistan. He volunteered in the spring of 1942 to fight on the front. One month prior to his death at the front in Smolensk, he sent a packet of poems to his wife in Namagan, Uzbekistan.

He debuted in print in 1929 with poems in Minsk’s Oktyabr (October). He wrote poems as well for: Shtern (Star) in Minsk, Farmest (Competition), and other Soviet Yiddish serial publications. His poems also appeared in: Birebidzhan (Birobidzhan) (Moscow, 1936); Di bafrayte brider (The liberated brothers) (Minsk: Byelorussian State Publishers, 1939); Sovetishe vaysrusland (Soviet Byelorussia) (Minsk: Byelorussian State Publishers, 1935); Tsum zig (Toward victory) (Moscow: Emes, 1944); and Af naye vegn (Along new pathways) (New York: Yidisher kultur farband, 1944). His works include: Start, lider (Minsk: Byelorussian State Publishers, 1934), 148 pp.; Undzer dzhim (Minsk: Byelorussian State Publishers, 1935), 50 pp.; Lider (Minsk: Byelorussian State Publishers, 1939), 103 pp. He translated Leo Tolstoy’s Filipok (Filipok) (Minsk: Byelorussian State Publishers, 1938), 16 pp., and Sevastopoler dertseylungen, 1855-1856 (Sevastopol stories, 1855-1856 [original: Sevastopolʹskiye razskazy]) (Minsk: Byelorussian State Publishers, 1938), 129 pp. A volume of his poems and translations into Byelorussian was published in 1962, entitled Lirika (Lyric poetry). “Before the war,” noted Yisroel Serebriani, “Shvedik’s poems excelled in their robust, youthful fantasies and dreams, childlike playfulness, and light rhythms…. [His] lyrical-philosophical poems of the sea were a subsequent bold step…. [In his wartime poetry,] one senses the maturity of an independent, original poet, who thinks, feels, believes, and sees in a wholly new way.”

Sources: Chone Shmeruk, comp., Pirsumim yehudiim babrit-hamoatsot, 1917-1961 (Jewish publications in the Soviet Union, 1917-1961) (Jerusalem, 1962), see index; Yisroel Serebriani, in Yidishe shriftn (Warsaw) 4 (1961); Aleksander Pomerants, Di sovetishe haruge malkhes, tsu zeyer 10-tn yortsayt, vegn dem tragishn goyrl fun di yidishe shraybers un der yidisher literatur in sovetnland (The [Jewish writers] murdered by the Soviet government, on their tenth anniversary of their deaths, concerning the tragic fate of the Yiddish writers and Yiddish literature in the Soviet Union) (Buenos Aires: YIVO, 1962), p. 241; Yeshurin archive, YIVO (New York).

Khayim Maltinski 

[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), pp. 382-83.]