EMANUEL HAKEN

EMANUEL HAKEN (b. March 29, 1909)

            He was a composer, born in Rimalov (Grzymalów, Hrymalijiv), Galicia.  He received his medical degree in Prague in 1934.  He composed music for many poems by Yiddish poets.  He lived in the 1930s in Romania, later in the Jewish refugee camps for survivors in Germany, and from 1951 in the United States.  His musical compositions were used at concerts and on the radio in Israel, America, and Canada.  Among his books: Nigunim tsu yidisher dikhtung (Songs to Yiddish poetry), 2 vols. (Tel Aviv: Or-tav, 1973, 1977).  A third volume was ready for publication.  “The poetic images of his work are rich and diverse,” wrote Nekhama Lifshits.  “From Manger’s Trubador (Troubador) and Halpern’s Dorfs-yung (Village youth), to folk motifs or Lutski’s rhythms.”