SHIYE STOLITSKI

SHIYE STOLITSKI (August 21, 1890-1943)

            He was born in Vilna.  His father was an employee in a sawmill.  He studied in a Russian school.  From 1906 he was active in various cultural groups, dramatic and musical circles.  He wrote a series of musical texts to poems by Leyb Naydus, with whom he was a close friend.  In Vilna’s Grininke beymelekh (Little green trees), he published translations of Lermontov, as well as Zhukovsky’s “Di milkhome tsvishn de mayz un di zhabes” (The war between the mice and the frogs).  In book form: Oysgeveylte mesholim (Selected fables) from the Russian author of fables, Ivan Krykov (Vilna: Ost, 1928), 94 pp.  During WWI he was held in German captivity, later returning to settle in Vilna, where he worked in an oil factory.  Over the years 1941-1943, he hid out with his family, using Aryan papers, in various villages in the Narocz area.  In early 1943 he was located in the town of Svir (Swir), and later peasants denounced him; he was then shot along with his wife and two sons.

Sources: Sh. Katsherginski, Khurbn vilne (The Holocaust in Vilna) (New York, 1947); E. Stolitski, in Yidishe shriftn (Warsaw) (April 1958).

Benyomen Elis