David Vogel (
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
: דוד פוגל; May 15, 1891–1944) was a Ukrainian-born
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
poet, novelist, and diarist.
Biography
David Vogel was born in the town of
Sataniv
Sataniv ( uk, Сатанів, russian: Сатанов, pl, Satanów) is an urban-type settlement in Khmelnytskyi Raion, Khmelnytskyi Oblast, Ukraine. It hosts the administration of Sataniv settlement hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine. Popu ...
in the Podolia region in the Russian Pale of Settlement.
The family spoke Yiddish. In 1909–1910, he arrived in
Vilnius
Vilnius ( , ; see also other names) is the capital and largest city of Lithuania, with a population of 592,389 (according to the state register) or 625,107 (according to the municipality of Vilnius). The population of Vilnius's functional urb ...
as a yeshiva student. He worked as the caretaker of a synagogue and studied Hebrew. Moving to
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
in 1912, he spent his time sitting in cafes and teaching Hebrew to make ends meet.
[Noa Limone reveals a previously unknown novel by David Vogel](_blank)
Haaretz
''Haaretz'' ( , originally ''Ḥadshot Haaretz'' – , ) is an Israeli newspaper. It was founded in 1918, making it the longest running newspaper currently in print in Israel, and is now published in both Hebrew and English in the Berliner f ...
He accepted a job copying letters for the Zionist federation but soon quit. During
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
he was arrested as a Russian enemy alien and spent time in internment camps.
[Carmi, T., ''The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse'', p 135, Penguin, 1981, ] Towards the end of the war, he began publishing impressionist poems.
In 1919, he married Ilka, who became ill with
tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in ...
. In 1925, he settled in Paris, where he wrote prose and poetry. In 1929, he and his second wife, Ada Nadler,
immigrated
Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle as permanent residents or naturalized citizens. Commuters, tourists, and ...
to Palestine, where their daughter, Tamara, was born. After spending time in Poland and Berlin, the family returned to Paris. When World War II erupted, Vogel and his daughter fled to southeastern France where Ada was recuperating in a sanatorium. He was interned as an Austrian citizen and freed in 1940 when the Nazis occupied France.
Various stories circulated about his life after that. In 1944–45, the Hebrew newspapers in Palestine reported his "disappearance."
He was presumed to have died in the
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
.
Israeli literary scholar
Dan Pagis
Dan Pagis (October 16, 1930 – June 29, 1986) was an Israeli poet, lecturer and Holocaust survivor.
Biography
Dan Pagis was born in Rădăuţi, Bukovina in Romania and imprisoned as a child in a concentration camp in Ukraine. He escaped in 19 ...
discovered that he returned to
Hauteville after his release from internment camp. In 1944, he was arrested by the Gestapo, imprisoned in Lyon, and sent to Drancy, a transit camp for French Jews. Four days later, he was murdered in
Auschwitz
Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...
.
Literary career
Among his works are collections of poems in free meter and several novels edited posthumously by Menachem Perry. His diaries covering the period 1912–1922 were published as ''The End of the Days.'' The novel ''Married Life'' was written between 1928 and 1929. The novel was re-published in Israel in 1986, in a new version edited from the manuscripts by Menachem Perry, and became a best-seller. A semi-autobiographical novel, written in
Yiddish
Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ver ...
and published in Hebrew as ''They All Went Out to Battle,'' is a Kafkaesque/carnivalesque depiction of deliberate, radical self-isolation in the French concentration camp. The Hebrew publication is a version prepared by Menachem Perry, who made a short novel out of hundreds of pages of the Yiddish manuscript.
The only book of poems he published in his lifetime was ''Lifney Hasha'ar Ha'afel'' ("Before the Dark Gate"), in Vienna in 1923, but his poetry was influential with other Hebrew poets in the 1950s.
[
The critic ]Yael S. Feldman Yael S. Feldman (Hebrew: יעל פלדמן, née Keren-Or, born 1941) is an Israeli-born American scholar and academic particularly known for her work in comparative literature and feminist Hebrew literary criticism.
She is the Abraham I. Katsh P ...
cites Vogel as an example in which bilingualism affected modern Hebrew poetry.
Published works
*''Lifnei Sha'ar ha-Afel'' (70 poems), Vienna (1923)
*''Le-ever ha-Dmamah'' (78 poems), posth. ed. Tel Aviv (1983)
*''They All Went Out to Battle'' (Yiddish)
*''In the Sanatorium'' (1927)
*''Facing the Sea'', Paris (1932)
*'' Married Life'' (1929; Menakhem Perry's version 1986)
*''Viennese Romance'' (c. 1937-1938; posth. ed. Tel Aviv 2012)
*''Extinguished Stations'' (ed. Menakhem Perry) (1990)
See also
*Hebrew literature
Hebrew literature consists of ancient, medieval, and modern writings in the Hebrew language. It is one of the primary forms of Jewish literature, though there have been cases of literature written in Hebrew by non-Jews. Hebrew literature was pro ...
*Yiddish literature
Yiddish literature encompasses all those belles-lettres written in Yiddish language, Yiddish, the language of Ashkenazim, Ashkenazic Jewry which is related to Middle High German. The history of Yiddish, with its roots in central Europe and locus ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Vogel, David
1891 births
1944 deaths
People from Khmelnytskyi Oblast
People from Proskurovsky Uyezd
Jews from the Russian Empire
Ukrainian Jews
French people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent
Hebrew-language poets
Jewish poets
Jewish novelists
20th-century novelists
Drancy internment camp prisoners
Ukrainian Jews who died in the Holocaust