YONI FAYN (JONI FAIN)

YONI FAYN (JONI FAIN) (b. May 3, 1914)

            He was born in Kamenets-Podolsk, Ukraine.  In 1924 he moved with his family to Vilna.  He graduated from a Jewish school and secular high school, as well as from the art department of the University of Vilna.  From 1936 he was in Warsaw and spent the war years in Shanghai.  In 1947 he came to Mexico City, where he was a teacher in the Jewish school.  From 1956 he was living in New York, where he was professor of art at Hofstra University.  He had numerous presentations of his works which for the most part were of Holocaust motifs.  He began writing poetry for Y. Rapaport’s Unzer vort (Our word) in Shanghai.  In later years he published poems in: Tsukunft (Future) in New York; Di goldene keyt (The golden chain) in Tel Aviv; and Unzer tsayt (Our time) in New York; among others.  In book form: A tlie unter di shtern (A gallows under the stars) (Mexico City, 1947), 206 pp.; Gute orkhim, lider (Good neighbors, poetry) (Tel Aviv: Yisroel-bukh, 1983), 168 pp.

Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 440.