MALKE LISAK

MALKE LISAK (1900-1965)

            She was born in Krashnevits (?), Poland.  She attended a Polish school.  From her youth she was interested in literature.  At age eleven she composed a play in Polish.  In 1915 she wrote a drama in Yiddish: Ayngefalene vent (Fallen walls).  Years later she traveled in Europe and lived for a time in Switzerland.  In 1921 she moved to Soviet Russia, settled in Moscow, and continued her writing there.  In book form: Velt-vinkl, a dray-akter (World-corner, a three act play), published together with two stories, “Afn roytn plats” (At a red plaza) and “A vakh-budke” (A sentry box) (Moscow, 1923), 32 pp.; Stratonavtn (Stratosphere fliers) (Moscow, 1935), 63 pp.  She also published stories in the journal Yungvald (Young forest) in 1925 and in the anthology Sovetish (Soviet) in Moscow in 1935.

Sources: Zalmen Zilbertsvayg, Leksikon fun yidishn teater (Handbook of the Yiddish theater), vol. 2 (New York, 1934); Chone Shmeruk, comp., Pirsumim yehudiim babrit-hamoatsot, 1917-1961 (Jewish publications in the Soviet Union, 1917-1961) (Jerusalem, 1961), see index.

Benyomen Elis

[Additional information from: Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 336; 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. 207-8.]