SHIFRE VERBER (SHIFRA, SHYFRA WERBER)

SHIFRE VERBER (SHIFRA, SHYFRA WERBER) (March 3, 1908-September 15, 1997)

            She was born in Vilna.  She received a secular Jewish education at home and in school.  She graduated from a Jewish senior high school in Vilna.  In 1926 she moved to Belgium and studied at Brussels University.  She was active in Jewish cultural and social life and in labor institutions of the left Labor Zionists.  She survived the years of the German occupation underground in Belgium.  She worked as a Jewish teacher and helped save Jewish children from death.  In 1948 she was delegate from Belgium to the founding conference of the World Jewish Culture Congress in New York.  From 1954 she was living in Israel.  She began writing for Kinder zhurnal (Children’s magazine) in Vilna (1925-1926), published by the students in her high school.  Later, in Belgium, she contributed to the illegal workers’ newspaper Unzer vort (Our word) in Brussels.  She also placed subsequent poems, children’s tales, stories, and articles in: Unzer vort and Hant in hant (Hand in hand) in Brussels (1945); Far unzere kinder (For our children) and Arbeter-vort (Workers’ word) in Paris; Argentiner beymelekh (Little Argentinian trees) and Hundert lider (One hundred poems) in Buenos Aires; Tsukunft (Future), Bleter fun yidisher dertsiung (Pages from Jewish education), and Unzer veg (Our way) in New York; and Heym (Home), Nayvelt (New world), and Di goldene keyt (The golden chain), among other serials, in Israel.  Her books would include: Niseles trer (Nisele’s tear), a children’s poem, with a foreword by F. Blank and illustrations by the painter Benn (Brussels, 1950), 47 pp.; Vund in bli, lider (Wound in bloom, poetry) (Tel Aviv: Perets Publ., 1968), 94 pp.; Af groz un leym, lider (On grass and lime, poetry) (Tel Aviv: Perets Publ., 1976), 103 pp.; Zikorn in shpign, lider (Memory in the mirror, poetry) (Tel Aviv: Perets Publ., 1984), 120 pp.  She also wrote under the name: Sh. T-ki.  She died in Kfar Sava, Israel.

Sources: D. B. Malkin, in Unzer vort (Paris) (June 7, 1951); A. Ribo, in Unzer vort (Brussels) (October 12, 1951); H. Abramovitsh, in Lebn (Buenos Aires) (March 1952); G. Gaysman, in Nayvelt (Tel Aviv) (April 14, 1953); Yankev Glatshteyn, in Idisher kemfer (New York) (May 22, 1955); M. Ravitsh, Mayn leksikon (My lexicon), vol. 3 (Montreal, 1958), p. 475.

[Additional information from: Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 251.]