(ARN-)AVROM KATSEV

(ARN-)AVROM KATSEV (1916-2000)

            He was a poet, born in the village of Chernin, Kiev district, into a family of farmers. When young, he lived in the Kalinindorf Ethnic Jewish District amid the Kherson steppes. While still a student at the Odessa Pedagogical Institute, he published his first poems. He debuted in print in 1931 in Zay gerekht (Get ready!) He was particularly successful with children’s poems which appeared in: Emes (Truth), Oktyaberl (Little October), and Yunge gvardye (Young guard). Under the supervision of Leyb Kvitko, the state publishers in Kiev in 1940 brought out Katsev’s first collection for these youngest lovers of the Yiddish word. Even after WWII he continued writing children’s poetry in Yiddish, when conditions under the Stalinist regime meant that there were no Jewish schools and no institutions in which children might hear a Yiddish word spoken openly. He graduated from the Odessa Pedagogical Institute and worked as a teacher in Jewish schools in the city of Konotop, Chernihiv district, Ukraine. During the period when Jewish schools were closed in the Soviet Union, he taught for several decades of Russian and Ukrainian in the Saratov, Kam"yanets'-Podil's'kyy, and Kherson districts. His poetry was well known to readers of Sovetish heymland (Soviet homeland) in Moscow, Folks-shtime (Voice of the people) in Warsaw, and Birobidzhaner shtern (Birobidzhan star). In 1980, the Moscow publishing house of Sovetskii pisatel' brought his poetry anthology Dos gute vort (The good word). And his collections of poetry were translated into Russian and Ukrainian. In 1990 he made aliya to Israel and published work in: Di goldene keyt (The golden chain), Yerusholaimer almanakh (Jerusalem almanac), Letste nayes (Latest news), Naye tsaytung (New newspaper), and Kind-un-keyt (Young and old).

His books include: Kinder lidelekh (Children’s poetry) (Kiev, 1940), 24 pp.; Dos gute vort, poems (Moscow: Sovetski pisatel, 1980), 129 pp. His work appeared in Ukrainian translation: Bulitsiya povna liudei (The street full of people) (Simferopol, 1972); and List do dida (A letter to Grandfather), children’s poetry (Kiev, 1975).

Sources: Supplement to Folks-shtime (Warsaw) (February 25, 1961); Yankev Glatshteyn, In der velt mit yidish (The world with Yiddish) (New York, 1972), p. 369; H. Rabinkov, in Birobidzhaner shtern (Birobidzhan) (July 6, 1980).

Yekhezkl Lifshits

[Additional information from: Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 477; and Chaim Beider, Leksikon fun yidishe shrayber in ratn-farband (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers in the Soviet Union), ed. Boris Sandler and Gennady Estraikh (New York: Congress for Jewish Culture, Inc., 2011), pp. 323-24.]