ALTER
GRINFELD (GREENFELD) (b. 1908)
He was born in Karelits (Korelice),
near Novogrudok. He studied in religious
primary school and with itinerant teachers.
Following the outbreak of WWI, when the Jews were sent out of the town,
he was living with his family in Svislotsh (Swislocz) and in
Novogrudok. When his father was taken
out to perform forced labor and his mother became ill, he became the family breadwinner,
raising poultry for a German officer and assisting the French prisoners with timber in the Białowieża Forest. In the evening hours, he studied German and
Tanakh with a prisoner of war. In 1919
he studied in a Russian evening course and later in the Yiddish-Hebrew public
school in Novogrudok. He worked as a
stitcher of footware, was active in the community suggesting the building of a
children’s club and library, and later organizing and running the local Pioneer
organization. In 1929 he was elected to
the Galilean Council of the Pioneers. He
traveled around the hinterland, giving reports and speeches on political and
literary topics. He edited wall newspapers
and wrote poems and articles. In 1934 he
was a contributor to Novoredoker lebn (Novogrudok life), in
which he published his articles also using the signature “A. Gr.” In 1936 the Karelits Library published his
poetry collection Mir iz gut (I’ve got it made), 32 pp. He also prepared a work entitled “Di yugnt af
der provints” (The youth in the hinterland), as well as a second poetry
collection. In 1937 he submitted a
request to enroll as a YIVO researcher in Vilna. When the Red Army entered Poland in 1939, he
left for Russia. His subsequent fate
remains unknown.
Source: Literarishe
bleter (Warsaw) (August 28, 1936).
Leyzer Ran
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