FROYM SHRAYER

FROYM SHRAYER (October 20, 1890-January 14, 1948)

            A German and Yiddish poet and translator, he was born in Vizhnits (Vizhnitsa), Bukovina.  He received a traditional and general education—in a German high school in Czernowitz and in Jong’s Hebrew high school in Hungarian Brod.  He lived in Vienna, Berlin, and London (1939-1942), and later moved to New York.  He published poems and reviews in German periodicals.  He grew closer to Yiddish in Berlin and began translating from German into Yiddish: Oysgeklibene mayselekh (Selected stories) by the Brothers Grimm (Berlin: Idisher kultur-farlag, 1923); and poetry by modern Yiddish poets.  From Yiddish to German, he translated: Mendele’s Shloyme reb khayims (Shloyme the son of Reb Khayim) and Masoes benyomen hashlishi (The travels of Benjamin III); Avrom-Moyshe Fuks, Afn bergl, dertseylung (In the hills, a story), in Menorah (Vienna); and poetry by Dovid Aynhorn, Meylekh Ravitsh, and others.  He died in New York.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 4; Yidishe kultur (New York) 2 (1948).

Berl Cohen