MALKE LISAK

MALKE LISAK (1900-1965)

            She was a playwright and prose author, born in the town of Krashnevits (?), Poland. She attended a Polish school. From her youth she was interested in literature, and 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: n.p., 1923), 32 pp.; Stratonavtn (Stratosphere fliers) (Moscow, 1935), 63 pp. She also published stories in the Moscow journal Yungvald (Young forest) in 1925 and in the anthology Sovetish (Soviet) in Moscow in 1935. Further information about her remains unknown.

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.]