YANKL
YANKELEVITSH (1904-1938)
He was born in the Bessarabian town
of Goneshti, and later his family moved to Dubosar. His father ran a paper shop and writing
implements; he died when Yankl, the youngest in the family, was fourteen. He studied in religious primary school,
public school, and later became a laborer.
After the Bolshevik Revolution, he continued his education. Over the years 1925-1933, he lived in Odessa,
studied in the local pedagogical institute (graduating in 1932). That year the authorities sent him to the
then capital of Soviet Moldavia in Tiraspol to teach. He taught Yiddish language and literature
there until 1938 in the Tiraspol Jewish middle school. He began publishing poetry in Odeser arbeter (Odessa worker) in 1925,
and from then on he contributed poems, stories, articles, children’s tales, and
translations to: Yungvald (Young
forest), Der pyoner (The pioneer),
and Der emes (The truth)—in Moscow; Yunger boy-klang (Young sound of construction),
Yunge gvardye (Young guard), Royte velt (Red world), and Prolit (Proletarian literature)—in Kharkov;
Shtern (Star), Zay greyt (Get ready), Proletarishe
fon (Proletarian banner), Sovetishe
literatur (Soviet literature), and Vos
geven un vos gevorn (What was and what will be), an anthology—in Kiev; and Oktyabr (October) in Minsk; among
others. He authored the collection Zaft, lider, 1926-1930 (Juice, poetry,
1926-1930) (Kharkov, 1931), 107 pp.; these poems were sharply criticized by the
Communist critic H. Remenik (in Prolit)
because they “lacked motifs which should have celebrated the Bolshevik Revolution
in the building of socialism.” He was
also the author of Lagern (Camps),
poems about the Red Army, the Moldavian steppes, and the like (Kharkov-Kiev,
1934), 74 pp.; Khaveyrim, detseylungen
far kinder (Comrades, stories for children) (Kiev, 1937), 48 pp.; Fraynt (Friend), nature motifs, poems of
youth and love, and Moldavian ballads (Kiev, 1938), 89 pp. His work was represented in: Shlakhtn, fuftsn yor oktyaber in der kinstlerisher
literatur (Battles, fifteen years of October in artistic literature), compiled together with H. Orland and B. Kahan
(Kharkov-Kiev, 1932); Deklamater fun der sovetisher
yidisher literatur (Reciter of Soviet Yiddish literature) (Moscow, 1934); Komyug, literarish-kinstlerisher
zamlbukh ([Jewish] Communist
Youth, literary-artistic anthology) (Moscow, 1938). On March 31, 1938 he was arrested in
Tiraspol. He had protested the closing
of local Jewish schools. He was
sentenced to ten years of forced labor without rights. This was, of course, nothing short of a cover
for a death sentence. In 1956 his family
received an official notice of his rehabilitation. According to Hershl Vaynraykh, he was
murdered by the NKVD.
Sources:
M. Kashtshevatski, in Prolit
(Kharkov) (March-April 1930); H. R. (Remenik), in Prolit (September-October 1931); A. Abtshuk, Etyudn un materialn
tsu der geshikhte fun der yidisher literatur bavegung in FSRR (Studies and
material for the history of the Yiddish literature movement in the Soviet
Union) (Kharkov, 1934), p. 336; Y. Bronshteyn, Sheferishe problemen fun der
yidisher sovetisher poezye (Creative problems in Soviet Yiddish poetry)
(Minsk, 1936), p. 59; A. Druker, in Yunge
gvardye (Kharkov) 25 (1935); H. G. in Proletarishe
pen (Kiev) 46 (1935); H. Vaynraykh, Blut
af der zun (Blood on the sun) (New York, 1950), pp. 51, 194-95.
Khayim Leyb Fuks
[Additional
information from: Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon
fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New
York, 1986), col. 295; 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), p. 174.]
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