URI GLIKLIKH

URI GLIKLIKH (1895-1939/1941)

            He was born in Lutsk, Volhynia, into a well-to-do, intellectual family.  He received both a religious and a general education.  He graduated from a Russian Hebrew high school.  For a period of time, he studied at the Warsaw Polytechnicum; later, he lived in Belgium and in Holland where he graduated from the local polytechnicum as an engineer-technician.  From his early student years, he was active in the Zionist and pioneer movement.  He was an instructor for Polesye in Hashomer Hatsair (The youth guard).  In the years just prior to WWII, he was living in Warsaw.  He began his literary activity with lyrical poetry, and some of them were published in the anthology Shprotsungen (Sprouts) in Warsaw (1925-1926), of which he served as an editor.  He was also one of the cofounders of the Yiddish periodical press in Volhynia and Polesye.  He contributed pieces to a great number of newspapers and periodicals in Poland and elsewhere.  He published poems, sketches, literary criticism, interviews with various Jewish and European personalities, and scholarly articles as well.  Concerning technical accomplishments in the main, he wrote for: Moment (Moment), Literarishe bleter (Literary leaves), Arbeter tsaytung (Workers’ newspaper), and Fraye yugnt (Free youth)—all in Warsaw; Tsayt (Times) in Vilna; Lodzher tageblat (Lodz daily newspaper) in Lodz; Dos naye lebn (The new life) in Bialystok; Grodner moment (Grodno moment) in Grodno; Polesyer shtime (Voice of Polesye) and Brisker vokhnblat (Brisk daily newspaper) in Brisk (Brest); Zaglembyer tsaytung (Zaglembie newspaper) in Będzin; and Voliner vokh (Volhynia week) in Rovno, of which he was one of the main contributors and for a time served on its editorial board.  He also contributed to: Keneder odler (Canadian eagle) in Montreal, Di prese (The press) in Buenos Aires, and others.  His articles and reportage pieces on the Subbotniks [a Judaizing Christian sect] in Volhynia and Ukraine provide important material for research on this religious sect.  He was also known as an expert on Ukrainian and Byelorussian literature and published a great number of translations of Ukrainian poets and prose writers.  When war broke out in 1939, he was in Warsaw; later, he left going east for the Russian border.  There are two version of how he died: (1) he died in the German bombing during the first days of September 1939; and (2) until the Russo-German war, he was in the Soviet-occupied region, and he died in an effort to break through from Ukraine to Poland in September 1941.

Sources: Biblyografishe yorbikher fun yivo (Bibliographic annuals from YIVO) (Warsaw, 1928); Lite (Lithuania), anthology (New York, 1951), vol. 1, pp. 1149-50.