LIPE (LIPA) FISHER

LIPE (LIPA) FISHER (b. April 20, 1905)

            He was born in Yezherne (Ozerna), Galicia.  He studied in religious elementary school and in a German public school in Vienna.  He later completed a B.A. as an external student.  In late 1939 he fled to Soviet Russia, where he was sentenced to ten years in a camp in Siberia.  Freed in 1951, he lived in the Urals until 1957.  He returned to Poland, and in 1958 he made aliya to Israel.  He composed poetry in Yiddish and Polish.  He published in: Letste nayes (Latest news), Yidishe tsaytung (Jewish newspaper), and Nowiny kurier (News courier) in Tel Aviv; Dorem-afrike (South Africa) in Johannesburg; Dos yidishe folk (The Jewish people) in London; and Ukrainian periodicals in New York and Toronto.  His work also appeared in Yezherner yizker-bukh (Remembrance volume for Ozerna) (1971).  In book form: A frizerer in lager, iberlebenishn fun an asir-tsien in sovetishe turmes un lagern (A barber in camp, experiences of a prisoner of Zion in Soviet prisons and camps) (Tel Aviv, Hamenorah, 1975), 384 pp.—Russian translation as Parikmakher v gulage (Tel Aviv, 1977), 258 pp., Hebrew: Sapar bemamlekhet gulag (Tel Aviv, 1979), 341 pp., English: Barber in Gulag (Tel Aviv, 1980), 231 pp.—and Un dokh dergreykht, fartsaykhenungen fun an asir-tsien (In spite of this, I have attained, notes of a prisoner of Zion) (Tel Aviv: Naye tsaytung, 1985), 384 pp.  He also published a collection of poems in Polish (1976) and in Hebrew (1982) under the title Besaarat hazeman (Stormy times), translated from Yiddish and Polish by Aryeh Brauner (Tel Aviv, 1982), 111 pp.

Sources: Y. Shmuelevitsh, in Forverts (New York) (April 2, 1976); Sh. Kants, in Letste nayes (Tel Aviv) (December 30, 1977; November 7, 1980).

Ruvn Goldberg

Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), cols. 445, 549.