SHIFRE
KHOLODENKO (1909-July 1974))
She was born in the village of
Bartkova Rudniya, Ukraine, the sister of the poet Dovid Hofshteyn. Their father, an employee in the timber
business, had settled the family in the late 1890s in Volhynia. On her mother’s side, she descended from the
well-known Berdichev folk musician Pedatsur Kholodenko. In 1928 she was a student in the faculty of
physics and mathematics at the first state university in Moscow. She worked on scientific expeditions to the
north, which later was reflected in her creative work. She debuted in print with poetry in the
literary and artistic monthly Shtrom
(Current) (Moscow) 3 (1922). Her poetic
voice soon found a distinctive place in the world of Soviet poetry. Her first collection of poems was entitled Lebn (Life) (Kiev: Ukrainian state
publishers for national minorities, 1937), 62 pp.; the second collection was Lider (Poems) (Kiev: Ukrainian state
publishers for national minorities, 1940), 119 pp. She later contributed to the Kiev almanac Ukraine (Ukraine) and other Soviet
Yiddish periodicals. She also wrote
stories, and five of them appeared in 1940 in book form under the title Gantsfri (Completely free) (Moscow: Der
Emes), 40 pp. Also, a portion of his
poetry appeared as a book entitled Undzer
kraft (Our strength) (Moscow: Der Emes, 1947), 128 pp. This volume of poetry had five sections: 1.
“Undzer kraft”—“I did not know until now of my strength, / I cannot now weight
or measure it, / It has been tested on every grid, / With every struggle I feel
it getting steadier”; 2. “Vander” (Migrating); 3. “Gevikst” (Waxed); 4. “Erd”
(Earth); 5. “Lebn” (Life). She later
published: Dos vort (The word)
(Moscow: Sovetski pisatel, 1974), 163 pp.
His work was represented as well in: Tsum zig (To victory)
(Moscow, 1944); and the poetry collection Yugnt
(Youth) (Kharkov, 1922). One senses the
feelings of a woman and a mother in her poetry.
She suffered greatly over the years.
The death of her brother, who was for her a continual support and a
consolation throughout her life, was a personal tragedy. It was exacerbated by the fact that she could
in no way express her feelings publicly—in written or oral form. After her death there was discovered in the
drawer of her writing table poems of great pain in which she expressed her
feelings. She died in Moscow.
Sources:
Y. Nusinov, in Royte velt (Kharkov) 9
(1926); D. Tsharni (Daniel Charney), in Literarishe
bleter (Warsaw) 3 (1927); E. Korman, Yidishe dikhterins
(Jewish women poets) (Chicago, 1928), pp. 300, 302, 346; N. Y. Gotlib, in Tsukunft (New York) (1951); 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), cols. 313-14; 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), pp.
183-84.]
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