SONYE (SONIA) GERBERT

SONYE (SONIA) GERBERT (b. 1896)

            She was born in a town near Odessa, Ukraine.  She received an ethnic Jewish education.  She graduated from a Russian public school.  She survived the 1905 pogrom against Jews in Odessa.  She later emigrated to the United States and for a time worked in various trades in New York.  She became active in the Zionist labor movement, primarily in the Pioneer Women’s organization.  She published poetry on popular Jewish motifs in: Tog (Day), Fraye arbeter shtime (Free voice of labor), Morgn zhurnal (Morning journal), Idisher kemfer (Jewish fighter), and Nyu-yorker vokhnblat (New York weekly newspaper), among others.  Among her books: Mayn harbst gezang (My autumn song), with a foreword by Moyshe Freylikhov (Miami Beach, Florida, 1940), 83 pp. of poetry and 12 pp. of prose; Strunes fun mayn herts, lider (My heartstrings, poems) (Miami Beach, 1948), 266 pp.  In the late 1930s, she settled in Miami Beach, where she was active in cultural work for the local Workmen’s Circle and in the Pioneer Women’s movement.

Sources: M. Freylikhov, Foreword to her book, Mayn harbst gezang (Miami Beach, 1940), pp. 3-4; Tsukunft (New York) (April 1949).