SHMUEL BREGMAN

SHMUEL BREGMAN (1891-1942)

            He was born in a village near Pinsk, Polesia, to farming parents.  He attended school until age nine.  He later worked in Pinsk as a baker and a blacksmith.  In 1905 he was arrested for revolutionary activities.  In the years 1914-1917, he was a soldier in the Tsarist army at the front.  He lived in Tiflis and Kislovodsk.  His published books include: Durkh krig un revolutsye (Through war and revolution), vol. 1 (Kharkov-Kiev, 1932), 378 pp., and vol. 2 (Kharkov-Kiev, 1932), memoirs of the war, 358 pp.; Afn mizrekh iz umruik (Trouble in the East), a novel (Moscow, 1934), 339 pp.; Nyome shvarts, zayn yugnt (Nyome Shvarts, his youth), part 1 (Kiev-Kharkov, 1935), 158 pp.; Sreyres (Fires), a novel (Moscow, 1935), 222 pp.; Es vet zayn a shturem (A storm’s coming), a reworking of Durkh krig un revolutsye, part 1 (Moscow: Emes, 1935), 240 pp.; Teg in fayer (Days on fire), part 2 of Es vet zayn a shturem (Moscow: Emes, 1935), 225 pp.; Noveln (Novellas) (Minsk: State Publ., 1939), 94 pp.; Shloymke guterman (Shloymke Guterman) (Moscow, 1939), 235 pp.; Freydl helman (Freydl Helman), a novel (Kiev, 1937), 330 pp.  He was killed by the Nazis during their invasion of the Caucasus.

Sources: Y. Dobrushin, In iberboy (In reconstruction) (Moscow, 1932); Kh. Dunyets, Far magnitboyen fun der literatur (On the great works of literature) (Minsk, 1932); D. Tsharni, in Literarishe bleter (Warsaw) 41 (1932); L. Brovarnik, in Sovetishe literatur (May 1939).

[Additional information from: Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 122.]