ZISI VAYTSMAN

ZISI VAYTSMAN (b. 1946)

            He is a poet, born in Belz, Bessarabia, into the family of a carpenter. The language in his home growing up was Yiddish. As there were no Jewish schools at that time, he mastered reading and writing Yiddish on his own. After graduating from a Russian school, he studied in a construction technicum from which he graduated in 1967. He began to write poetry in childhood, and his first creations were published in the newspaper Birobidzhaner shtern (Birobidzhan star), while he was serving in the army in the Far East. He was the deputy to the commander of a military division, and after demobilization he settled in the city of Samara, where he was active in Jewish life of the local community. In the 1970s and 1980s, he published in Sovetish heymland (Soviet homeland) in Moscow. Since May 2007, he has been living in Israel.

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. 140.