DVOYRE KHOROL

DVOYRE KHOROL (1898-mid-1982)

            She was born in Okhrimov, Kiev district, Ukraine, into the home of her grandfather, the wealthy timber merchant Rifoel Bergelson.  She was the niece of the writer Dovid Bergelson.  In her home Yiddish literature was a familiar item, and she recalled that people read Sholem-Aleykhem stories and that her uncle read Y. L. Perets’s stories aloud.  At age fourteen she was taken to Kiev, where she completed high school and went on to study natural science at university.  In 1919 she was enrolled in a higher pedagogical institution.  From 1920 she was working in a variety of children’s institutions.  In 1928 she was a teacher in a school in Podol (Podil), a suburb of Kiev.  She published poems in: the third issue of the monthly Shtros (Tide) in Moscow (1922); later, in Komunistishe fon (Communist banner) in Kiev (1923); Royte velt (Red world) in Kharkov; the almanac Ukraine (Ukraine) in Kiev (1926); the anthology Barg-aruf (Uphill) in Kiev (1927); and others.  Her first book appeared in 1928: Lider (Poetry) (Kharkov: Gezkult), 65 pp., and that same year her poems appeared in Ezra Korman’s anthology, Yidishe dikhterins (Jewish women poets) (Chicago).  She was especially successful with her booklets of children’s poetry.  Many of her Yiddish children’s poems were translated into Russian.  Her subsequent books include: Undzere shkheynim (Our neighbors), poems for children (Moscow: Emes, 1934), 16 pp.; Friling (Spring), for children (Moscow: Emes, 1935), 15 pp.; Gortnvarg (Vegetables) (Moscow: Emes, 1936), 13 pp.; Der komer (The mosquito) (Moscow: Emes, 1937), 14 pp.; Di bin un der hon (The bee and the rooster), poetry (Moscow: Emes, 1937), 16 pp.; Harbst (Autumn), children’s poetry (Moscow: Emes, 1938), 12 pp.; Aeroplaner (Airplanes), poems (Moscow: Emes, 1938), 11 pp.; Yolke (Little fir tree), a poem (Moscow: Emes, 1938), 14 pp.; Avtomobil (Automobile), poems (Moscow: Emes, 1939), 14 pp.; In kinder-kolonye (In the children’s colony) (Moscow: Emes, 1939), 15 pp.; In vald (In the woods) (Moscow: Emes, 1940), 11 pp.  Her work was also represented in Lomir zingen (Let’s sing) (Moscow, 1940).  She succeeded in surviving the liquidation of the Yiddish writers in the Stalin years; her name was among the signatures among the surviving writers in greetings on the occasion of the eightieth birthday of Z. Vendrof in 1956.  She was among the contributors to Sovetish heymland (Soviet homeland) in Moscow (July-October 1961), and a poetry cycle of hers appeared in Horizontn (Horizons) in Moscow in 1965.  She died in Kiev.

Sources: Y. Dobrushin, in Nayerd (New earth), anthology 1 (Moscow, 1925); literary supplement to the daily newspaper Kamfer (Kiev) (1923); E. Korman, Yidishe dikhterins (Jewish women poets) (Chicago, 1928); N. Mayzil, Dos yidishe shafn un der yidisher shrayber in sovetnfarband (Jewish creation and the Yiddish writer in the Soviet Union) (New York, 1959), see index.

Mortkhe Yofe

[Additional information from: Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 314; and 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. 184.]