DORE KHAYKIN (KHAYKINE)

DORE KHAYKIN (KHAYKINE) (b. October 8, 1913-2006)

            She was a poet and prose author, born in the city of Chernigov (Chernihiv), Ukraine, into a family of office workers. She was raised over the years 1919-1927 in a children’s home. For a time she worked in Kiev enterprises as a weaver and a knitter. In 1932 she graduated from the Kiev economic technical school. In 1935 she married the writer Yekhiel Falikman, with whom she lived for a while in Birobidzhan. Her first published poems appeared in Prolit (Proletarian literature) 1-2 (1931). She later published poems in: Sovetishe literatur (Soviet literature) and Farmest (Challenge), among other serials. Her first book appeared in 1938, the only volume of hers published before WWII. During WWII she volunteered in the army. Among her works in the war years, the anti-Nazi poems excelled. She managed to escape Stalin’s liquidation of Yiddish writers. She contributed a poem to the first issue of Sovetish heymland (Soviet homeland) in Moscow (July-August 1961). With the founding of this journal, she became particularly active as a writer again in the early 1960s. She subsequently began to write stories and novellas. She also often placed work in the journal Birobidzhaner shtern (Birobidzhan star). Her poetry was lyrical with the principal motifs being the life and feelings of a Jewish woman, landscapes, and love. In 1993 she made aliya to Israel and settled in Haifa.

Her writings include: Lider (Poetry) (Kiev: Ukrainian State Publishers for National Minorities, 1938), 69 pp.; Lider un balades (Poems and ballads) (Kiev, 1941); a poetry cycle in Horizontn (Horizons) (Moscow: Sovetski pisatel, 1965); Fun ale mayne vegn, lider (Of all my ways, poetry) (Moscow: Sovetski pisatel, 1975), 182 pp.; Lutsyes libe, dertseylungen un noveln (Lucia’s love, stories and novellas) (Moscow: Sovetski pisatel, 1983), 269 pp.; Briv tsu kumendike doyres (Letter to future generations) (Moscow: Sovetski pisatel, 1988), 62 pp.; Di tsutsiungs-kraft, lider (The power of attraction, poetry) (Moscow: Sovetski pisatel, 1990), 221 pp. Her work also appeared in: Almanakh fun yidishe sovetishe shrayber tsum alfarbandishn shrayber-tsuzamenfor (Almanac, from Soviet Jewish writers to the all-Soviet conference of writers) (Kharkov: Ukrainian State Publishers for National Minorities, 1934); and Komsomolye (Communist Youth) (Kiev: Ukrainian State Publishers for National Minorities, 1938).

Sources: A Pomerants, Inzhinyern fun neshomes (Engineers of souls) (New York, 1944), p. 62; P. Novik, Eyrope tsvishn milkhome un sholem (Europe between war and peace) (New York, 1948), pp. 269-70; Eynikeyt (Moscow) (August 11, 1945); Folksshtime (Warsaw) (October 1, 1957); N. Mayzil, Dos yidishe shafn un der yidisher arbeter in sovetn-farband (Jewish creation and the Jewish worker 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. 316; 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. 191.]