He was a
poet and prose writer, born Hertsl Haysiner in Kapresht (Căpreşti),
Bessarabia. He was a student at the
Kishinev technical school for construction, later a construction engineer on
highways. He early on joined the
revolutionary underground movement and wrote satirical poetry. From 1934 he was living in Bucharest. He spent WWII in the Soviet Union, and
afterward he was back in Kishinev. Despite
his fidelity to the Soviet cause, he was among the first casualties of the
Stalinist terror in the bitterest of times for Soviet Yiddish literature. In 1948 he was convicted of Trotskyism and
exiled to a camp in Ekibastuz in northern Kazakhstan, where he died. Naftole-Herts Kohen recounted that Rivkin held
himself courageously and dignified during his camp interrogations. He was one of the founders of the literary
group “Yung-rumenye” (Young Romania). In
the 1930s he published poetry in Romanian Yiddish serials: Onzog (Portent) in Kishinev (1931), published and edited with Yankl
Yakir and Hersh-Leyb Kazhber; the Zionist daily newspaper Unzer veg (Our way) in Kishinev (1933); Di vokh (The week) in Bucharest (1934); and Shoybn (Window panes) in Bucharest (1934-1938). He also wrote for Warsaw’s Literarishe bleter (Literary
leaves). After the war he began writing
stories for Heymland (Homeland), Sovetishe literatur (Soviet literature)
in Kiev, and other periodicals. As a
result of a competition, in 1946 he was awarded the Eynikeyt (Unity) prize for
his story “Der tate mitn zun” (Father and son) in Moscow. His poetry appeared in Naye yidishe dikhtung (New Yiddish poetry) (Iași, 1947) and a story in Af naye vegn (Along new paths) (New
York, 1949) and In oyfshteyg
(In ascent) (Bucharest, 1964). In book
form: Fun shkheynishn dorf, lid un elegye
(From the neighboring village, poem and elegy) (Bucharest: Shoybn, 1938), 57
pp., new edition (Bucharest: Kriteryon, 1977), 133 pp.; Dertseylungen (Stories) (Moscow: Emes, 1948), 102 pp.
Sources: Shloyme Bikl, Rumenye (Romania) (Buenos Aires, 1961), pp. 298-301; Motl Saktsyer,
in Besaraber yidn (Tel Aviv) (August
1977); Yankl Yakir, in Dorem-afrike
(Johannesburg) (March-June 1978); Bay
zikh (Tel Aviv) 15 (1979), pp. 123-28.
Ruvn Goldberg
[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), pp. 364-65].
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