Sunday 14 April 2019

MEYER KRAVETS (KRAWETZ)


MEYER KRAVETS (KRAWETZ) (February 14, 1895[1]-July 25, 1962)
            The author of stories, he was born in Stolin, Minsk Province.  He studied in religious primary school and yeshiva.  From 1911 he was living in the United States.  He engaged in a variety of labors in a variety of places.  In 1923 he settled in New York.  He was active in the leftist labor movement, though he later distanced himself from it.  From 1925 he published stories in: Fraye arbeter shtime (Free voice of labor), Yunge kuznye (Young furrier), Hamer (Hammer), Gerekhtikeyt (Justice), Kundes (Prankster), Zayn (Being), and mostly in Frayhayt (Freedom).  He co-edited a couple of issues of Oyfgang (Arise) (January-February 1929; closed down at the end of 1919) and the anthology Yunyon skver (Union Square) (New York, 1930).  In book form: Af di vegn fun vint (On the roads of the wind) (New York: Proletarishe mishpokhe, 1928), 224 pp.; A nayer baginen (A new dawn) (New York: Progressive Dressmakers’ Branch 122, Workmen’s Circle, 1957), 192 pp.; Der letster kholem (The last dream) (New York: Zayn, 1960), 173 pp.  “Kravets is a writer vagabond,” wrote Der Lebediker, “with extraordinary subject matter, who writes poetically about unfortunate people….  He introduces a new theme with a new approach into our fiction.”  “He paints a variety of distinctive images [and]…various characters,” noted Z. Yefroykin, “…but the motif is unitary: gloom, loneliness, passing away.”  In the English-language journal Medallion, he wrote under the pen name M. K. Taylor.  He died in New York.

Sources: M. Shtiker, in Der veker (New York) (July 21, 1928); Shmuel Niger, in Tog (New York) (December 8, 1928); A. Pomerants, in Proletpen (Kiev, 1935), p. 239; Z. Yefroykin, in Tog (June 1957); Y. Kohn, Baym rand fun onhoyb (At the edge of the beginning) (New York, 1960), pp. 37-45; Yeshurin archive, YIVO (New York).
Berl Cohen



[1] This information comes from Kravets’s wife; Zalmen Reyzen gives a date of January 3, 1892.

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