From Hamburg to Kharkiv: Soviet Yiddish Literature from West to East

• In Event: Soviet Jews: Survival and Flight

Abstract

In the wake of the chaos, violence, and destruction which accompanied and followed the
revolutions and civil war(s), thousands of Jews fled west from the lands of the former
Russian Empire. This group of refugees was made up of all strata of society, which included
Yiddish writers. Berlin became a temporary new capital of “Yiddishland,” which has received
scholarly attention in recent years, but it was not the only site of Jewish migration nor the
only home to those who would go on to become the most prominent representatives of
Soviet Yiddish literature: Warsaw, Tel Aviv, and even Hamburg were temporary homes to
writers like Perets Markish, Dovid Hofshteyn, and Leyb Kvitko. While in the West, these Yiddish writers mostly kept their gaze fixed on the East: using Leyb Kvitko as a primary example, this paper reads his work written in the West as examples of
the growth of a specifically Soviet Yiddish literature abroad.

Author

• Brett Winestock, Dalhousie U (Canada)