David Bergelson
Encyclopedia
Yiddish language
Yiddish is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages...
writer. Ukrainian
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
-born, he lived for a time in Berlin, Germany. He moved back to the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
when Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
came to power in Germany. He was ultimately executed during antisemitic
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
campaign against "rootless cosmopolitan
Rootless cosmopolitan
Rootless cosmopolitan was a Soviet euphemism widely used during Joseph Stalin's anti-Semitic campaign of 1948–1953, which culminated in the "exposure" of the alleged Doctors' plot...
s".
Biography
Born in the Ukrainian shtetlShtetl
A shtetl was typically a small town with a large Jewish population in Central and Eastern Europe until The Holocaust. Shtetls were mainly found in the areas which constituted the 19th century Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire, the Congress Kingdom of Poland, Galicia and Romania...
of Okhrimovo (also known as Okhrimovka, now Sarny
Sarny
Sarny translated as Deer, is a small city in the Rivne Oblast of western Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Sarny Raion , and is a major railway node on the Sluch River.The current estimated population is 27,700....
), near Uman
Uman
Uman is a city located in the Cherkasy Oblast in central Ukraine, to the east of Vinnytsia. The city rests on the banks of the Umanka River at around , and serves as the self-governing administrative center of the Umanskyi Raion ....
, he first became known as a writer in the wake of the failed Russian Revolution of 1905
Russian Revolution of 1905
The 1905 Russian Revolution was a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire. Some of it was directed against the government, while some was undirected. It included worker strikes, peasant unrest, and military mutinies...
. From a Hasidic
Hasidic Judaism
Hasidic Judaism or Hasidism, from the Hebrew —Ḥasidut in Sephardi, Chasidus in Ashkenazi, meaning "piety" , is a branch of Orthodox Judaism that promotes spirituality and joy through the popularisation and internalisation of Jewish mysticism as the fundamental aspects of the Jewish faith...
background, but having received both religious and secular education, much of his writing is reminiscent of Anton Chekhov
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...
: stories of "largely secular, frustrated young people…, ineffectual intellectuals…", frustrated by the provincial shtetl life. Writing at first in Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
and Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
, he only met success when he turned to his native Yiddish; his first successful book was Arum Vokzal (At the Depot) a novella
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
, published at his own expense in 1909 in Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
.
In 1917, he founded the avant garde Jidishe Kultur Lige
Kultur Lige
The Kultur Lige was a secular socialist Jewish organization associated with the Jewish Labour Bund, established in Kiev in 1918, whose aim was to promote Yiddish language literature, theater and culture...
(Yiddish Culture League) in Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
. In spring 1921 he moved to Berlin, which would be his base throughout the years of the Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
, although he traveled extensively through Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and also visited the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. According to J. Hoberman
J. Hoberman
James Lewis Hoberman , also known as J. Hoberman, is an American film critic. He is currently the senior film critic for The Village Voice, a post he has held since 1988.-Education:...
, he was "the best-known (and certainly the best-paid) Russian Yiddish writer of the 1920s". Until the mid-1920s he wrote for the New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
-based Yiddish-language newspaper The Forward
The Forward
The Forward , commonly known as The Jewish Daily Forward, is a Jewish-American newspaper published in New York City. The publication began in 1897 as a Yiddish-language daily issued by dissidents from the Socialist Labor Party of Daniel DeLeon...
.
His 1926 essay "Three Centers" expressed a belief that the Soviet Union (where Yiddish language and literature were then receiving official patronage) had eclipsed the assimilationist
Cultural assimilation
Cultural assimilation is a socio-political response to demographic multi-ethnicity that supports or promotes the assimilation of ethnic minorities into the dominant culture. The term assimilation is often used with regard to immigrants and various ethnic groups who have settled in a new land. New...
United States and backwards Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
as the great future locus of Yiddish literature. He began writing for the Communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
Yiddish press in both New York (Morgn Frayhayt) and Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
(Emes), and moved to the Soviet Union in 1933, around the time the Nazis
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
came to power in Germany.
He was positively impressed with the Jewish Autonomous Republic of Birobidzhan
Birobidzhan
Birobidzhan is a town and the administrative center of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, Russia. It is located on the Trans-Siberian railway, close to the border with the People's Republic of China....
, and participated in the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was formed on Joseph Stalin's order in Kuibyshev in April 1942 with the official support of the Soviet authorities...
during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. However, like many Jewish writers, he was a target antisemitic campaign against "rootless cosmopolitans". Arrested in January 1949, he was tried secretly and executed by a firing squad in the event known as the Night of the Murdered Poets
Night of the Murdered Poets
On August 12, 1952, thirteen Soviet Jews were executed in the Lubyanka Prison in Moscow, Russia as a result of charges of espionage based on forced, false confessions resulting from coercion and torture. This massacre is known as the Night of the Murdered Poets....
on August 12–13, 1952. After Stalin's death, he was posthumously rehabilitated, and his complete works were published in the Soviet Union in 1961.
Works
The following is a partial list of Bergelson's works.- Arum Vokzal (At the Depot, novella, 1909)
- Departing (novella, 1913)
- Nokh Alemen; title variously translated as When All Is Said and Done (1977 English-language title) or The End of Everything.
- Divine Justice (novel, 1925)
- "Three Centers" (essay, 1926)
- Storm Days (short stories, 1928)
- Baym Dnieper (At the Dnieper, novel, 1932)
- The Jewish Autonomous Region (pamphlet published by the Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow)
- Naye Dertseylungen (New Stories, war stories, 1947)
Translations into English
- When All Is Said and Done, translated, and introduced by Bernard Martin. Ohio University Press: Athens, 1977. ISBN 0-8214-0360-5.
- The Stories of David Bergelson: Yiddish Short Fiction from Russia (two short stories and a novella), translated and introduced by Golda Werman, foreword by Aharon Appelfeld. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-8156-2712-2.
- Descent, translated and introduced by Joseph Sherman. Modern Language Association of America: New York, 1999. ISBN 0-87352-788-7.
- Shadows of Berlin: the Berlin stories of Dovid Bergelson (seven short stories and a satirical sketch from The Forward), translated by Joachim NeugroschelJoachim NeugroschelJoachim Neugroschel was a well known literary translator from French, German, Italian, Russian, and Yiddish, and also to German. He also published poetry and was a poetry magazine founder.- Biography :...
. City Lights Books: San Francisco, June 2005. ISBN 0-87286-444-8.