BERL KOROBEYNIK

BERL KOROBEYNIK (1910-1941)

            He was a poet, born in Korostishev (Korostyshiv), Zhytomyr region, Ukraine, the same place of origin of the poet Dovid Hofshteyn who very favorably responded to the first works of the young Korobeynik. After graduating from the local school named for Osher Shvartsman, he moved to Kiev in the late 1920s. He worked in a factory there and at the same time continued his studies. He debuted in print with poems in the Kharkov newspaper Zay greyt (Be ready!) and in Yunge gvardye (Young guard). Prominent in his poems were motifs of labor making people joyous. This enthusiasm for labor, the joy of hard work, led the poet to poems dedicated to service in the army, whence he was called on the eve of WWII. He served in the Soviet army and during WWII fell at the front in the defense of Kiev. He authored numerous poems, but few of them were published. His work also appeared in: Prolit (Proletarian literature). Books include: Af mayn yungn aksl (On my young shoulders), poetry (Kharkov-Kiev: Ukrainian State Publishers for National Minorities, 1932), 48 pp.; Khanatayev (Khanatayev), a poem (Kiev, 1940), 127 pp.; Se raysn zikh feldzn (Crying over spilt milk) (Moscow, 1985).

Sources: Chone Shmeruk, comp., Pirsumim yehudiim babrit-hamoatsot, 1917-1961 (Jewish publications in the Soviet Union, 1917-1961) (Jerusalem, 1961), see index; Sh. in Sovetishe literatur (Kiev) (September 1940); A. Pomerants, Di sovetishe haruge malkhes (The [Jewish writers] murdered by the Soviet government) (Buenos Aires, 1962), p. 265.

Khayim Moltinski

[Additional information from: 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), p. 324.]