Altman, Moses Elevich

The early years

Moishe Altman was born in the Bessarabian town of Lipcani (now in the Briceni district of Moldova ) on the left bank of the Prut in 1890 . The Lipkans gave modern Jewish literature a whole constellation of names, which is why the Jewish poet Haim-Nahman Bialik called them the "Bessarabian Olympus ." Moyshe Altman studied in a cheder and until 1908 in a private Kamenetz-Podilsky gymnasium together with another famous poet and theater-goer Yankev Sternberg .

Since 1918 he lived in Bucharest , where he made his debut in poetry and literary criticism in 1920 . Later, he almost completely switched to prose, being published in various periodicals of Romania , Poland and the USA . The first collection of short stories “Blandish” ( Mirage ) was published in Chernivtsi in 1926, followed by a collection of short stories “Di Wiener Karete” ( Vienna Carriage , 1935), the novels “Medrash Pinhes” ( Legend of Pinchosa , 1936) and “Shmeterheringen” ( Moths , 1939). Altman became widely known as a brilliant stylist.

In the Soviet Union

In 1930 he emigrated to Argentina , where he serves as the director of the Jewish children's home in Buenos Aires , but a year later he returns to Bucharest and works as the editor of the literary weekly Di Voh ( Week ). In 1939, Altman, along with the already well-known director Yankev Sternberg, crossed the Dniester , along which the border with the USSR then passed. Soon Bessarabia and Bukovina transferred to the Soviet Union and Altman returned to Bessarabia, which had by then become Soviet Moldova . Becomes a member of the Union of Writers of the USSR .

During the war years in evacuation in Central Asia. After the war he settles in Chernivtsi, where he works as a literary editor of the Kiev Jewish Theater who moved there after the evacuation (Kiev GOSET under the direction of Moishe Goldblat ). He prints short stories and the play "Dos Cente Gebot" ( The Tenth Commandment , 1948) in Moscow Jewish periodicals. At the beginning of 1949, a book of his stories of the war years was published in Moscow , and on April 15 he was arrested in connection with the so-called. case No. 5390 on the Trotskyist-nationalist group of Bessarabian writers. From Chernivtsi he was transferred through Kiev to Chisinau , where by that time the remaining accused from among local writers - Yankl Yakir , Motl Saktsier and Herzl Gaisiner-Rivkin had already been arrested. At the end of September of the same year, each of the accused was sentenced to 10 years in forced labor camps and sent to Kuibyshev in November, where the group was separated and sixty-year-old Altman and Saktsier were sent to BAM .

Late Period

After his release and rehabilitation in 1955, he returned to his daughter in Chernivtsi, where he lives until the end of his life. In the same year, in New York, under the editorship of Shloime Bickle , a book of selected Altman prose was published. In 1959 , Moscow published a collection of his stories of the war years translated into Russian and in the same year the entire issue of the magazine Yiddish Shriftn ( Jewish Texts ) in Warsaw devoted entirely to his works. Since 1961, the publication of works by Soviet Jewish writers in Yiddish has been resumed in the Soviet Union, and Altman has begun collaborating with the magazine Sovetish Geymland ( Soviet Homeland ). In the next two decades, the play “Monish”, poems, essays, short stories, essays, translations of Russian and world literature ( A. N. Ostrovsky , Leonid Leonov , Moliere , etc.) appear in this journal. In 1980, two volumes of the writer’s chosen prose were published at the Moscow publishing house Soviet Writer at once; Sovetish Geymland magazine posthumously publishes his play Iftokh Shpil ( Piece Iftakh ) in 1988 .

Moishe Altman remains one of the most delicate stylists of modern Yiddish prose, whose name is firmly connected with the period of its highest prosperity.

• בלענדעניש ( Blendanish - a mirage: two short stories), Culture : Chernivtsi, 1926.
• די װינער קאַרעטע ( Di Wiener Karete - Viennese carriage, novels and short stories), Bucharest, 1935.
• אױף די שפּאָרן פֿון מאָטל אומרו: מדרש-פּינחס ( Af Di Sporn Fun Motl Umru: Medrash Pinhes - in the footsteps of Motla-Fidget: The Tale of Pinhosa, according to Motla Fidget-Brechleme , novel, 19 ).
• שמעטערלינגען ( Schmetherlingen - Moths, novel), Bucharest, 1939.
• דער װאָרצל ( Der Worzl - Root: War Tales), Der Emes : Moscow, 1949.
• געקליבענע װערק ( Göklibane Verk - selected works), compiled by Shloime Bikl , CIKO-farlag : New York, 1955.
• Roots (short stories), Russian translation by O. Lyubomirsky, Soviet writer: Moscow, 1959.
• אױטאָביִאָגראַפֿישע בלעטלעך ( Otobiography Bletlach - autobiographical leaflets), Yiddish Shriftn : Warsaw, 1959.
• Be-omek ha-rem sipurim ve-romantim ketserim (selected stories and novels translated into Hebrew ), Tel Aviv , 1967.
• באַם פֿענצטער: זקנישע נאָטיצן ( Bam Fanzter: Zekeynishe Notitzn - by the window: old notes), Sovetish Geymland magazine library, No. 7, Soviet writer : Moscow, 1980.
• די װינער קאַרעטע ( Di Wiener Karete - Viennese carriage, favorites), foreword by Ichil Schreibman , Soviet writer : Moscow, 1980.

• Essay on the Apocalypse