MEYER DVORKIN

MEYER DVORKIN (b. 1893)

            He was born in Streshin (Strešyn), near Minsk, Byelorussia, into a poor working-class family.  He studied in religious elementary school, later in an evening course.  He lived for a time in Minsk, Ekaterinoslav, and Warsaw.  In 1908 he emigrated to the United States.  In New York he worked in tailor shops, while studying in the evening.  He graduated from middle school and studied humanities and social science for two years at New York University.  Due to material circumstances, he had to interrupt his studies.  He began publishing reportage pieces in Frayhayt (Freedom) in New York in 1921, and from that point on he contributed articles, stories, and one-act plays (of which a number were staged in drama circles) in Frayhayt, Hamer (Hammer), Gezang un kamf (Song and struggle), and in the English newspaper Daily Worker, among others, in New York.  He was living in Cleveland.  His work also appeared in In shotn fun tliyes (In the shadow of the gallows) (Kiev-Kharkov, 1932).

Sources: Biblyografishe yorbikher fun yivo (Bibliographic yearbooks from YIVO) (Warsaw, 1928), see index; Aleksander Pomerants, Proletpen (Proletarian pen) (Kiev, 1935), pp. 202-3.

[Additional information from: Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 193.]