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.]
Year of birth is rather 1894.
ReplyDelete