SHIMEN GOLDENBERG

SHIMEN GOLDENBERG (1910-1941)

            He was a Soviet Yiddish poet and prose writer from the post-October generation, born in the Volhynian town of Kupel (Kupil), Ukraine, into a family of butchers. Orphaned at age five, he studied in religious elementary school. At age seven he began reading secular books in Hebrew, and at twelve he started writing poetry in the style of Chaim Nachman Bialik and Shaul Tchernichovsky. In 1925 he became involved in the Zionist youth movement, publishing a poem “Yehudi ani!” (I am a Jew!) in Al hamishmar (On guard), the illegal organ of the Zionist Organization, Hashomer Hatsair (Young guard). Soon, however, he withdrew from the movement, and in late 1927 he traveled to Odessa to study in the Jewish Pedagogical Technicum. Earlier, on April 12, 1927, the Kharkov newspaper Yunge gvardye (Young guard) published his short poem, and this served as his debut into Yiddish literature. Another early publication was a poem in Kharkov’s Yung-boy (Young structure) 7 (1928). In Odessa he became a member of the literary group of young authors that would often convene under the leadership of their teacher of Yiddish literature in school, Arn Vorobeytshik. Goldenberg’s poetry appeared in the newspapers: Odeser arbeter (Odessa worker), Der berditshever arbeter (The Berdichev worker), Kharkov’s Der shtern (The star), Minsk’s Oktyabr (October), and especially in the publications of young authors Yunge gvardye and Zay greyt (Get ready!). The journal Prolit (Proletarian literature) in Kharkov published in issue 6 for 1930 his cycle of poems, In step (On the steppe)—impressions from his trip to the Jewish colonies in the Odessa region. In 1930 he graduated from the teachers’ course of study in the Yiddish language and literature from the Odessa Institute for People’s Education. At that time, his family emigrated from Kupil to Argentina, though he alone remained in the Soviet Union, taking up a teaching position in a Jewish school in Balta, Odessa region. He moved to Kharkov in 1931 and became a contributor to the children’s newspaper Zay greyt and published poems and stories in the literary journals Di royte velt (The red world) and Prolit. When the capital of Ukraine moved from Kharkov to Kiev in 1934, and all the central institutions of the Ukrainian S.S.R. moved there, among them the Yiddish publishing houses and publications, he too moved to Kiev. That same year, he was one of the participants in the All-Soviet Conference of Yiddish Writers in Moscow. In the last years prior to the start of WWII, he worked in the Republican Yiddish Library and continued his literary work. In 1941 he went to the front. The last postcard received from him was dated September 4, 1941.

            Among his books: In umru geboyrene (Born in chaos), poems (Kharkov: Literatur un kunst, 1932), 106 pp.; Lider un balades (Poems and ballads) (Kiev: Ukrainian State Publishers for National Minorities, 1936), 117 pp.; Heymland (Homeland), stories (Kiev, 1938); A mame (A mother), stories (Kiev, 1940); “Sternfal” (Starfall), poetry cycle in the anthology Di lire (The lyre) (Moscow, 1985).  He translated: F. N. Oleshchuk, Dos sektantum un zayn reaktsyonere role (Sectarianism and its reactionary role) (Kiev: Ukrainian State Publishers for National Minorities, 1937), 27 pp.

Sources: “In der yidisher un hebreisher literatur” (In Yiddish and Hebrew literature), Tsukunft (August 1943); Kh. Loytsker, in Eynikeyt (October 7, 1947).

[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.69-70.]