MEYER PAKNTREGER

MEYER PAKNTREGER (March 3, 1914-December 18, 1960)

            He was born in Kalish (Kalisz), Poland.  He attended religious elementary school, later graduated from an artisan’s school for locksmith mechanics and studied for a year in the technical school in Warsaw.  He spent the years of WWII in the Soviet Union in a labor camp.  In 1942 he was in the land of Israel.  At first he worked on a kibbutz there, later in a factory.  He contributed poems, stories, and sketches to: Kalisher vokh (Kalisz week), in Kalisz; Nay velt (New world), Fray yisroel (Free Israel), Letste nayes (Latest news), Ilustrirte vokhnblat (Illustrated weekly newspaper), Eynikeyt (Unity), Di brik (The bridge), and Unzer tsayt (Our times) in Israel; and Amerikaner (American), Tsukunft (Future), and Yidishe kultur (Jewish culture) in New York.  His books include: Fun yungn dor (From the young generation) (Kalisz, 1930), 20 pp.; Afn shvel fun tog, lider (At the threshold of day, poems) (Haifa, 1946), 32 pp.; In bloyen baginen (In a blue dawn) (Tel Aviv, 1950), 32 pp.  He died in Israel.

Sources: L. Run, in Nay velt (Tel Aviv) (February 11, 1947); Meylekh Ravitsh, in Keneder odler (Montreal) (April 28, 1947); Ravitsh, Mayn leksikon (My lexicon), vol. 3 (Montreal, 1958), p. 482; Pinkhes Guterman, in Yidishe tsaytung (Tel Aviv) (June 13, 1961); Y. Pozner, Almanakh fun di yidishe shrayber in yisroel (Almanac of Yiddish writers in Israel) (Tel Aviv, 1962).

Benyomen Elis