KHAYIM-MORTKHE FIDERER

KHAYIM-MORTKHE FIDERER (June 25, 1897-December 30, 1962)

            The brother of Shmuel Fiderer, he was born in Tłuste, near Chortkiv, Galicia.  Until age thirteen he studied in religious primary school, thereafter becoming a laborer.  During WWI he was living in Vienna.  He was active in the Labor Zionist party.  He refused to serve in the army and was thus imprisoned until the end of 1918.  At the time of the Nazi Anschluss in Austria, he was still living in Vienna, and he left there for Zurich.  He contributed work for the Zurich Jewish community, mainly in the field of refugee relief.  From 1941 until his death, he lived in New York.  He began writing poetry in 1918 and debuted in print in Yudisher arbayter (Jewish worker) in Vienna.  He later placed work in: Arbeter tsaytung (Workers’ newspaper), Der yunger dor (The young generation), and Di fraye yugnt (The free youth), among others, in Warsaw; Dos idishe vokhnblat (The Jewish weekly newspaper) in Zurich; and Nyu yorker vokhnblat (New York weekly newspaper) and Unzer veg (Our way), among others, in New York.  In book form: Lider fun a polit (Poems of a refugee) (New York, 1961), 161 pp.

Sources: Sh. D. Zinger, in Unzer veg (New York) (September-October 1962); obituary notices in the Yiddish press.

Khayim Leyb Fuks