MOYSHE BLEKHER

MOYSHE BLEKHER (b. December 24, 1904)

He was born in Jablonov, Kolomyia, Galicia, into the home of a wealthy manufacturing family.  Until 1914 he attended religious elementary school and the city’s public school.  With the outbreak of WWI, they was robbed by Cossacks and driven out of their town, before the family eventually reached Vienna.  Disregarding the difficult economic circumstances, he attended public school and Moses Roth’s Hebrew Pedagogium (Teacher’s Seminary).  Late in 1919 he settled in Stanislavov, gave private lessons, studied further on his own, and in 1924 graduated from high school; in 1933 he graduated from Cracow University in the Germanic and Orientalist departments.  In 1934 he became a research student at YIVO in Vilna and wrote a work on Heinrich Heine’s influence on Jewish literature; a chapter of this work, entitled “Avrom reyzen de haynist” (Avrom Reyzen, the Heine-ist), appeared in Yivo-bleter (Pages from YIVO) in 1936.  He also wrote “A yor aspirantur yivo” (A year as a research student at YIVO), Yivo-bleter (1937), pp. 2-9.  He wrote poems and articles for Literarishe velt (Literary world) (Warsaw, May 1928—his first poem); Der morgen (Morning) in Lemberg; Dos yudishe vort (The Yiddish word) in Cracow; Velt-shpigl (Mirror of the world), Teater-tsaytung (Theater newspaper), and Farvaylungs-blat (Entertainment news)—all in Warsaw; and Vilner tog (Vilna day).  From June 1935, he published in Cracow a literary monthly magazine by the name of Der reflector (The reflector).  In 1938 he published in Di post (The post) in Cracow.  He also wrote revue pieces for the variety theaters Ararat, Di yidishe bande, and the Vilna “Davke Ensemble” and for the Jewish artists and reciters: Y. Turkov, D. Blumenfeld, F. Blumental, and Malvina Rappel.  He was last living in Israel.