SHLOYME TSHERNYOVSKI (TSHERNYOVSKI)

SHLOYME TSHERNYOVSKI (TSHERNYOVSKI) (1909-August 19, 1974)

            He was born in Kovel, Volhynia, Ukraine.  His parents died in a pogrom, and he was raised in a children’s home.  In the early 1930s, he moved to Kharkov and worked for the newspaper Der shtern (The star).  He began publishing in 1933 poetry and translations of Ukrainian poets in: Yunger boy-klang (Young sound of construction), Yunge gvardye (Young guard), Komunist (Communist), and Prolit (Proletarian literature)—in Kharkov; Di fraye yugent (Free youth) in Kiev; Pyoner (Pioneer) and Yungvald (Young forest) in Moscow; Litkomyug, a komyugisher zamlbukh: proze, poezye un kritik (Literary Communist youth: a Communist youth anthology of prose, poetry, and criticism) (Kharkov-Kiev, 1933); Almanakh fun yidishe sovetishe shrayber tsum alfarbandishn shrayber-tsuzamenfor (Almanac, from Soviet Jewish writers to the all-Soviet conference of writers) (Kharkov, 1934); Eynikeyt (Unity) in Moscow (1947); and other serials.  In book form: Flamike yugent (Youth on fire), poems (Kiev-Kharkov, 1935), 64 pp.; and Lirik (Lyric) (Kiev, 1940), 121 pp.  During the repression of Yiddish literature in the Soviet Union, he was expelled from the writers’ association for “lack of creativity,” and he was thus rendered invisible.  Then, in the first issue of Sovetish heymland (Soviet homeland) (Moscow) 1 (July-August 1961), his poem “Libshaft” (Love) appeared.  Subsequent poems were published in Sovetish heymland on occasion.  He died in Kiev.

Sources: D. T-n, in Shtern (Kharkov) 290 (1935); M. Marefes, in Yunge gvardye (Kharkov) 1 (1936); N. Rubinshteyn, Dos yidishe bukh in sovetn-farband in 1932 (The Yiddish book in the Soviet Union in 1932) (Minsk, 1933), p. 132; Al. Pomerants, Inzhenern fun neshomes (Engineers of souls) (New York, 1943), p. 56; N. Mayzil, Dos yidishe shafn un der yidisher shrayber in sovetnfarband (Jewish creation and the Yiddish writer in the Soviet Union) (New York, 1959), pp. 128, 132; B. Ts. Goldberg, in Tog-morgn-zhurnal (New York) (October 10, 1961); Sovetish heymland, Materyaln far a leksikon fun der yidisher sovetisher literatur (Materials for a handbook of Soviet Jewish literature) (September 1975).

Khayim Leyb Fuks

[Additional information from: Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 290; Chaim Beider, Leksikon fun yidishe shrayber in ratn-farband (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers in the Soviet Union), ed. Boris Sandler and Gennady Estraikh (New York: Congress for Jewish Culture, Inc., 2011), pp. 169-70.]