YITSKHOK MILNER

YITSKHOK MILNER (d. July 2, 1928)

            At the start of the twentieth century, he was a book dealer in Krugersdorp, Transvaal.  The first issue of Hakokhav (The star), edited by Y. M. Traub in Johannesburg, dated June 14, 1903, carried a poem by him entitled “Tsum yudishen shtern” (To the Yiddish star), meaning to Hakokhav: “They are welcome, new stars, / Apparently lost their way / ….  We are close to the edge. / It takes days in the East / And night soon comes to an end. / Mother misses us / And reaches out to us with her hands.”  Milner later published poems in other Yiddish newspapers and literary publications in South Africa as well—mainly Der afrikaner (The African).  He died in Krugersdorp, South Africa.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 2; Y. Sh. Yudelovits, in Dorem-afrike (Johannesburg) (May 1950); L. Feldman, Yidn in dorem-afrike (Jews in South Africa) (Johannesburg, 1956), pp. 176, 291.

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