SHMUEL ORTENBERG

SHMUEL ORTENBERG (1903-1980)

            He was a journalist and literary scholar, born in Pogrebishtshe (Pohrebyshche), Ukraine. He studied Russian and Yiddish with private teachers. In 1924 he graduated in Kiev from the senior three-year pedagogical course of study. At the same time, he debuted in the Yiddish press—Der emes (The truth) and Der shtern (The star), among other serials—with articles on Yiddish, Russian, and European literature. On the eve of WWII, he was living and working in Vinitse (Vinnytsa), where he was studying Old Yiddish literature. After the war, he settled in the city of Dnepropetrovsk. He published articles on Yiddish literature in the Moscow journal Sovetish heymland (Soviet homeland). Among his writings: Y. y. linetski, zayn lebn un zayn shafn (Y. Y. Linetski, his life and his work) (Vinnytsa, 1931).

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), p. 30.