Yiddish WWII Poetry Book Presented in Moscow
Several presentations in Moscow were dedicated to the unique bilingual Yiddish-Russian poetry book “Продолжит петь его строка” (His Poem’s Line Will Continue to Sing), which contains poems of 23 Yiddish poets who died as Red Army soldiers fighting the Nazis during WWII.
Published in Birobidzhan, the book is dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the WWII victory. The poems, previously published in their original in the 1985 Soviet volume Di Lire (The Lyre), were translated for the first time into Russian by the Birobidzhan-based poet Alla Akimenko. The new book is richly illustrated by Vladislav Tsap, the main illustrator for the newspaper Birobidzhaner Shtern and the author of numerous sculptures and other prominent art works in Birobidzhan.
The official presentation, led by Elena Sarashevskaya, the editor-in-chief of Birobidzhaner Shtern, the initiator of the book’s project and its sole curator, was held on September 30 at the Moscow’s National Center Russia. A few days earlier, on September 20 and 21, the book was also independently presented by two writers of Birobidzhaner Shtern, Yoel Matveyev and Lyubov Lavrova. Their presentations, also held in Moscow, were accompanied by readings of other wartime Yiddish poets, mainly Shmuel Halkin (1897-1960) whose 65th death anniversary was marked on September 21. Presentations and TV coverage of the book were held in Birobidzhan as well.