BORIS
MOGILNER (1920-2000)
A poet and prose writer, he was born
in Sloveshne (Slovechne), Ukraine. He graduated
from a Jewish middle school in Korosten and continued his studies in the Kazan
Pedagogical Institute. From 1934 he was
writing poetry and stories for: Zay greyt
(Get ready), Yunge gvardye (Young
guard), Farmest (Challenge), Birebidzhaner shtern (Birobidzhan star),
and Sovetish heymland (Soviet
homeland). He moved with parents to
Kazan in 1936. He fought at the front in
WWII, and upon returning after the war he was met with denunciations “for anti-Soviet
propaganda” and “slandering the Soviet regime”—which led to a sentence of ten
years of penal labor, and he was sent to a camp in the Urals near the town of
Nizhny Tagil. His forced labor consisted
of cutting down trees and moving timber.
He was freed and rehabilitated in 1956.
He returned to Kazan, picked up his interrupted education, and graduated
from the pedagogical institute. He went
on for over twenty years to work as a teacher at the Murom and Balashove
Pedagogical Institutes, where he taught mathematics. After a forty-year interruption, in 1976 he
published poetry in Sovetish heymland,
for which he was also a member of the editorial board. He was the last of the literary contributors
of Sovetish heymland in 1991 when the
journal ceased to appear, and Arn Vergelis then began to bring out its
successor, Di yidishe gas (The
Yiddish street); he joined Vergelis and worked on this journal until 1997 when
it, too, was discontinued. He was the
last Yiddish poet in Moscow. His work
was represented as well in the anthology Kinder-shafung
(Children’s creation). His books
include: Kroyvim (Kinsmen) (Moscow:
Sovetski pisatel, 1980), 60 pp.; May in
kazan (May in Kazan), stories and novellas (Moscow, 1981), 316 pp.; Breyte horizontn (Wide horizons)
(Moscow, 1981), 62 pp.; Mayn zikorn,
lider un poemes (My memory, poetry) (Moscow: Sovetski, pisatel, 1985), 134
pp.
Sources:
Sovetish heymland, Materyaln far a leksikon fun der yidisher
sovetisher literatur (Materials for a handbook of Soviet Jewish literature)
(September 1975).
Berl
Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun
yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York,
1986), col. 354; 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. 222-23.
No comments:
Post a Comment