ROZE PERETS-LAKS

ROZE PERETS-LAKS (May 31, 1894-ca 1941)

            She was born in Pulavi (Puławy), Lublin district, Poland.  Her father Yoysef (a cousin of Y. L. Perets) was a Modzhitser Hassid and an employee in the lumber business.  Her mother was a descendant of a family of rabbis and rebbes.  She initially attended religious elementary school, and after the death of her father began to study Russian.  She graduated from middle school in Plotsk (Płock), and from 1911 to 1914 she studied dentistry in Warsaw; she spent her free time in Perets’s home.  She described her visits there in her memoirs.  After receiving her diploma, she practiced as a dentist in Lubartov (Lubartów) and Warsaw.  In 1923 she married the sculptor Aleksander Laks and settled in Vilna, and there she lived until the Nazis murdered her.  Already at age fourteen she began to write poems, a portion of which she published in the Russian journal Akkordi (Chords) in Vilna.  She began writing in Yiddish for Vilner tog (Vilna day) and Literarishe bleter (Literary leaves) in Warsaw.  Some of these poems are included in Ezra Korman’s anthology Yidishe dikhterins (Jewish poetesses) (Chicago, 1928), pp. 282-84, and Binem Heler’s Dos lid iz geblibn, lider fun yidishe dikhter in poyln, umgekumene beys der hitlerisher okupatsye, antologye (The poem remains, poetry of Jewish poets in Poland murdered during the Hitlerian occupation, an anthology) (Warsaw, 1951).  Her memoirs aroused a great deal of interest concerning Y. L. Perets and Y. Dinezon.  She published in: Bikher-velt (Book world) (1924); Literarishe bleter (issues 30, 32, 34, 42, 43, 50); and Lodzher tageblat (Lodz daily newspaper) (1929).  In book form: Arum peretsn, zikhroynes un batrakhtungen (Around Perets, memoirs and considerations) (Warsaw: Literarishe bleter, 1935), 68 pp.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 2; Arn Gurshteyn, in Tsaytshrift (Minsk) 1 (1926); “Fun vokh tsu vokh” (From week to week), Literarishe bleter (Warsaw) (March 29, 1935); Yivo-bleter (Vilna) 12 (August-October 1937); Sh. Tenenboym, in Di shtime (Mexico City) (May 21, 1955); Tenenboym, in Yizker-bukh pulav (Puławy remembrance volume) (New York, 1964).

Yekhiel Hirshhoyt