MOYSHE LOYEV

MOYSHE LOYEV (1917-August 27, 2013)

            He was a prose author, born in the city of Tsherkas (Cherkasy), Ukraine. His father, Leyb-Zeydl, worked his entire life as a cobbler; his mother, Ite-Malke, worked in a tobacco factory. He studied in religious primary school and later in the No. 11 seven-year Jewish school. From childhood he demonstrated acting talent, contributing to amateur and professional performances. After graduating from school, he studied in a one-year artisanal school and in 1935 attended the theatrical school at the Moscow Yiddish State Theater. Three years later he was a student in the Yiddish faculty at the Kiev Theatrical Institute, participating in performances of the Kiev Yiddish puppet theater and of the Yiddish State Theater of Ukraine. In July 1941 he was drafted into the army. He was captured by the Germans and went through three years of utter hell, and when he emerged alive, he was returned to the Red Army, though in a punitive battalion. On May 3, 1944 he was severely wounded in battle and was demobilized to recuperate. He returned to the theater in June 1945 which had moved from Kiev to Czernowitz. He debuted in print with a piece in the Kharkov children’s newspaper Zay greyt (Get ready) in 1930, later publishing as well in other Yiddish outlets. He placed his first stories in Sovetish heymland (Soviet homeland), as well as in the newspaper Birobidzhaner shtern (Birobidzhan star) in 1986. In late 1989 he emigrated to the United States, settled in New York, and published in the journals Yidishe kultur (Jewish culture) and Tsukunft (Future), and the newspapers Forverts (Forward) and Der algemeyne zhurnal (The general journal), as well as in Russian newspapers.

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. 193.