A Yiddish poet who gave voice to Soviet Jewish culture
In “Etele,” Kvitko mourned Jewish victims of the Nazis through Yiddish language and Jewish memory.
Leib Kvitko was a Soviet Jewish poet who wrote in Yiddish, producing both poetry and influential children’s literature while bringing revolutionary and Jewish experience into the same literary world. During the war he worked with the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and edited its newspaper, Eynikayt, giving poetic form to reports and memories of the Nazi murder of Jews. After the war, the state’s turn against Jewish cultural institutions made that earlier public role dangerous: arrested in the JAC case, he was executed in 1952 and rehabilitated in 1955.
Career Timeline
- 1917Published his first poem in Kyiv and his first collection, Liderlekh
- 1917–1921Yiddish poet of the Kyiv Group
- 1921–1925Lived in Berlin and Hamburg, joined the Communist Party of Germany, and conducted agitation among workers
- 1928–1941Worked on the autobiographical verse novel Yunge yorn
- 1941–1948Served on the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and edited Eynikayt
- 1947–1948Edited the literary and artistic almanac Heymland
- 1949–1952Imprisoned in the JAC case and sentenced to death by the Military Collegium
- 1952Executed in Moscow on August 12