HERSHL BARAZ

 HERSHL BARAZ (b. 1915)

            He was a poet and prose author, born in the city of Romanov (later, Dzerzhinsk), Ukraine. In 1936 he graduated from the Jewish department of the Odessa Pedagogical Institute and worked as a teacher. He was drafted into the military in 1938 and took part in fighting in Halhgol, Mongolia. During WWII, he graduated from a pilots’ school and the Voroshilov Air Academy and took part as a military pilot in numerous battles, and later after leaving the military he settled in the city of Rostov-on-Don. He debuted in Yiddish literature at the end of the 1930s, publishing stories, poems, and essays in Yiddish newspapers. When the journal Sovetish heymland (Soviet homeland) began to be published, he became a regular writer for it.

            His work includes: Der mames harts (The mother’s heart), stories and essays, a supplement to the journal Sovetish heymland 3 (1987) and (Moscow: Sovetski pisatel, 1987), 61 pp.

Source: 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. 36-37.