RIFOEL POZNER (RAPHAEL POSNER)

RIFOEL POZNER (RAPHAEL POSNER) (b. February 25, 1897)

            He was born in Lutomiersk, near Lodz.  He was raised in Lodz.  During WWI he went to work in Germany.  Afterward he immigrated to North America.  He lived in Cuba and Mexico, and from 1926 in various cities in the United States; from 1947 he was in Los Angeles.  He debuted in print in 1927 in Frayhayt (Freedom) in New York, later contributing to: Signal (Signal) and Yidishe kultur (Jewish culture) in New York; and Landsmanshaftn (Native-place associations) in Buenos Aires.  In book form: A mentsh in veg (A man on the road), memoirs (New York: IKUF, 1954), 281 pp.; Heym un velt (Home and world), fiction and essays (Warsaw: Yidish bukh, 1966), 360 pp.; Vegn felker un lender (On peoples and countries) (Los Angeles: Bukh-komitet, 1971), 235 pp.  He was last living in Los Angeles.

Source: Y. Mestl, in Yidishe kultur (New York) (May 1954).

Leyb Vaserman

[Additional information from: Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 423.]