BOREKH SOLTS

BOREKH SOLTS (1903-September 1928)

            He was a journalist and editor, born in a town in western Byelorussia. At age fourteen he became active in community work. At age fifteen he was one of the initiators and cofounders of educational courses for youth and adults in his hometown and energetically undertook his own self-education. It was at that time that he brought out his first correspondence pieces and sketches in Yiddish newspapers. In 1918 he left to serve in the Red Army, before being demobilized and returning home. In the early 1920s, his hometown became a part of Poland. He was arrested in 1921 for illegal revolutionary activities and was sentenced by a Polish court to death, which was later commuted to thirteen years in prison. After serving four years in Grodno and Białystok prisons, he was sent off to the Soviet Union in 1925. From that point he settled in Minsk, where (from the summer of 1926) he worked as a contributor to the bimonthly journal Der yunger arbeter (The young worker) and later as a member of the editorial board and, for a time, as editor. He also co-edited Literarish bletl (Literary paper) in Minsk. Together with Note Vaynhoyz, he compiled a pamphlet Yomim-neroim (Days of awe) (Minsk: Chervonaia zmena, 1926), 27 pp. He died in Minsk.

Sources: B. Alter, obituary notice in Der shtern (Kharkov-Kiev) (September 11, 1928); 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: 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. 255-56.]