LEYZER LEYBOVITSH

LEYZER LEYBOVITSH (b. March 15, 1906)

            He was born in Poshvetin (Poshvityn, Pašvitinys), Lithuania.  During WWI he traveled with his parents to Melitopol, Russia.  He returned to Lithuania in 1918.  He studied at Hebrew high schools, 1925-1926, in Kovno and Shavel (Šiauliai), and in 1927 attended the Kovno Tarbut teachers’ seminary.  At the end of that year, he emigrated to South Africa.  He submitted correspondence pieces from South Africa to Di idishe shtime (The Jewish voice) in Kovno.  He published prose works and poetry, among them poems about Bantu folklore, in: Afrikaner idishe tsaytung (African Jewish newspaper) in Johannesburg; the monthly Dorem-afrike (South Africa), in which he published in May 1962 the story “Zizi,” a description of life in the province of Eastern Cape; and the English-language Zionist Record.  Over the years 1950-1953, he edited the English-language Eastern Province Jewish Reporter.  He visited the state of Israel, Soviet Russia, and Western Europe, and published travel impressions in Afrikaner idishe tsaytung.  He was last living in Fort Elizabeth, South Africa.

Benyomen Elis