Der Nister ( yi, דער נסתּר ֹor דער ניסטער, "the Hidden One"; 1 November 1884 – 4 June 1950 in a
Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...
Gulag
The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in ...
) was the pseudonym of Pinchus Kahanovich ( yi, פּנחס קאַהאַנאָוויטש), a
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 ve ...
Ukraine
Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...
, the third in a family of four children with ties to the Korshev sect of
Hasidic Judaism
Hasidism, sometimes spelled Chassidism, and also known as Hasidic Judaism (Ashkenazi Hebrew: חסידות ''Ḥăsīdus'', ; originally, "piety"), is a Judaism, Jewish religious group that arose as a spiritual revival movement in the territory ...
. His father was Menakhem Mendl Kahanovich, a smoked-fish merchant at
Astrakhan
Astrakhan ( rus, Астрахань, p=ˈastrəxənʲ) is the largest city and administrative centre of Astrakhan Oblast in Southern Russia. The city lies on two banks of the Volga, in the upper part of the Volga Delta, on eleven islands of the ...
on the
Volga River
The Volga (; russian: Во́лга, a=Ru-Волга.ogg, p=ˈvoɫɡə) is the longest river in Europe. Situated in Russia, it flows through Central Russia to Southern Russia and into the Caspian Sea. The Volga has a length of , and a catchme ...
; his mother's name was Leah. He received a traditional religious education, but was drawn through his reading to
secular
Secularity, also the secular or secularness (from Latin ''saeculum'', "worldly" or "of a generation"), is the state of being unrelated or neutral in regards to religion. Anything that does not have an explicit reference to religion, either negativ ...
Zionism
Zionism ( he, צִיּוֹנוּת ''Tsiyyonut'' after '' Zion'') is a nationalist movement that espouses the establishment of, and support for a homeland for the Jewish people centered in the area roughly corresponding to what is known in Je ...
. In 1904 he left Berdychiv hoping to evade the military draft, and this was probably the time when he started using the pseudonym. He moved to
Zhytomyr
Zhytomyr ( uk, Жито́мир, translit=Zhytomyr ; russian: Жито́мир, Zhitomir ; pl, Żytomierz ; yi, זשיטאָמיר, Zhitomir; german: Schytomyr ) is a city in the north of the western half of Ukraine. It is the administrative ...
, near Kiev, where he earned a modest living as a teacher of Hebrew at an orphanage for Jewish boys.
At that time he also wrote his first book, in Yiddish, ''Gedankn un motivn - lider in proze'' ("Ideas and Motifs - Prose Poems"), published in Vilna in 1907. He also made the acquaintance of the Yiddish writer I. L. Peretz, whom he greatly admired. Peretz recognised Der Nister's literary talents, and helped and encouraged him to publish his prose ''Hekher fun der Erd'' ("Higher than the Earth"), published in Warsaw in 1910.
In 1912, Kahanovich married Rokhel Zilberberg, a teacher. Their daughter, Hodel, was born in July 1913, shortly after the publication of his third book, ''Gezang un gebet'' ("Song and Prayer") in Kiev. At the outbreak of
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 found work in the timber industry, which gave him exemption from military service. He continued to write and produced in 1918/19 the first of his books for children, ''Mayselech in ferzn'' ("Erzählungen in Versen"; "Stories in Verse"). Also at this time he translated several of Andersen's fairy tales.
Life
In 1920, he lived for a few months in a Jewish orphanage at Malakhovka, Moscow Oblast, where he worked as a teacher for Jewish orphans, whose parents had been killed during the Tsarist pogroms from 1904 to 1906. Here he met other Jewish artists and intellectuals, among them David Hofstein,
Leib Kvitko
Leyb Moiseyevich Kvitko (russian: Лев Моисе́евич Кви́тко, yi, לייב קוויטקאָ) (October 15, 1890 – August 12, 1952) was a prominent Yiddish poet, an author of well-known children's poems and a member of the Je ...
and Marc Chagall.Dara Horn, ''The World to Come'', New York: W. W. Norton, 2006, p. 313.
Probably in early 1921 Kahanovich left Malakowka and moved with his family to Kovno (now Kaunas), Lithuania. Here he had great difficulty earning a living, and decided to leave, as many other Russian intellectuals were doing, and moved to
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...
,
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
, where his son Joseph was born. From 1922 to 1924 he worked there as a freelancer for the Yiddish journal '' Milgroim'' ("Pomegranate") and also edited, along with David Bergelson, several Yiddish literary journals, though they didn't last long. In Berlin, he also published a two-volume collection of his short stories under the title ''Gedakht'' ("Imagined"). The book was his first modest literary success. When the ''Milgroim'' closed in 1924, he moved with his family to
Hamburg
(male), (female) en, Hamburger(s),
Hamburgian(s)
, timezone1 = Central (CET)
, utc_offset1 = +1
, timezone1_DST = Central (CEST)
, utc_offset1_DST = +2
, postal ...
, where he worked for two years for the Soviet Trade Mission.
In 1926, like many fellow exiles, he returned to the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
and settled in
Kharkiv
Kharkiv ( uk, wikt:Харків, Ха́рків, ), also known as Kharkov (russian: Харькoв, ), is the second-largest List of cities in Ukraine, city and List of hromadas of Ukraine, municipality in Ukraine.Kiev ''Fun mayne giter'' ("From My Estates"). The work contained a complicated web of metaphors tied to Hasidic mysticism - especially on the
Kabbalah
Kabbalah ( he, קַבָּלָה ''Qabbālā'', literally "reception, tradition") is an esoteric method, discipline and school of thought in Jewish mysticism. A traditional Kabbalist is called a Mekubbal ( ''Məqūbbāl'' "receiver"). The defin ...
and the symbolic stories of
Nachman of Breslov
Nachman of Breslov ( he, רַבִּי נַחְמָן מִבְּרֶסְלֶב ''Rabbī'' ''Naḥmān mīBreslev''), also known as Reb Nachman of Bratslav, Reb Nachman Breslover ( yi, רבי נחמן ברעסלאווער ''Rebe Nakhmen Breslover'' ...
- that can create a universe of images and parables, folk tales, children's poems and rhymes. His long sentences create a hypnotic rhythm. But they also reflect the increasing pressure that has been exerted at that time by the Soviet regime on Jewish intellectuals. However, the symbol-laden work, rich in Jewish themes, was declared reactionary by the Soviet regime and its literary critics. He was subjected to the increasingly stringent Soviet censorship. In 1929, he was criticized when the Russian Yiddish newspaper ''Di Royte Velt'' ("The Red World") reprinted his tale ''Unter a Ployt'' ("Bottom Fence"). The then president of the Russian Yiddish Writers Federation, Moyshe Litvakov, initiated a smear campaign at the end of which Der Nister had to renounce the literary symbolism.
He tried now to write his literary work within the constraints of prevailing
socialist realism
Socialist realism is a style of idealized realistic art that was developed in the Soviet Union and was the official style in that country between 1932 and 1988, as well as in other socialist countries after World War II. Socialist realism is c ...
and began to write stories. These collected essays appeared in 1934 under the title ''Hoyptshtet'' ("Capital cities"). He stopped publishing his original works and earned a living as a journalist. In the early 1930s he worked almost exclusively as a journalist and translator, translating works by Tolstoy, Victor Hugo and Jack London. His own literary work was limited to four small collections of short stories for children.
Just before
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
, the Soviet government briefly adopted less censorious policies over writings considered to be promoting Zionism. Der Nister began working on his real masterpiece: ''Di Mishpokhe Mashber'' ("The Family Mashber"). The first volume of work appeared in 1939 in Moscow. The work was almost universally praised by critics, and he seemed to be rehabilitated. But the success did not last long. The limited edition of the first volume sold out quickly, but the Second World War and the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, made publication of a second edition impossible. The second volume, dedicated to his daughter Hodel, who starved to death at the siege of Leningrad in early 1942, was not published until 1948 in New York. The manuscript of the third volume, the completion of which Der Nister, mentioned in a letter, has been lost.
During World War II, Der Nister was evacuated to
Tashkent
Tashkent (, uz, Toshkent, Тошкент/, ) (from russian: Ташкент), or Toshkent (; ), also historically known as Chach is the capital and largest city of Uzbekistan. It is the most populous city in Central Asia, with a population of 2 ...
, where he wrote stories about the horrors of the persecution of Jews in
German-occupied Poland
German-occupied Poland during World War II consisted of two major parts with different types of administration.
The Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany following the invasion of Poland at the beginning of World War II—nearly a quarter of the ...
, which had been described to him by friends firsthand. These collected stories were published in 1943 under the title ''Korbones'' ("Victims") in Moscow, where he had retired with his second wife Lena Singalowska, a former actress of the Yiddish theater in Kiev. In April 1942, Stalin ordered the formation of the
Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, ''Yevreysky antifashistsky komitet'' yi, יידישער אנטי פאשיסטישער קאמיטעט, ''Yidisher anti fashistisher komitet''., abbreviated as JAC, ''YeAK'', was an organization that was created i ...
designed to influence international public opinion and organize political and material support for the Soviet fight against
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
, particularly from the
West
West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth.
Etymology
The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some ...
.
Solomon Mikhoels
Solomon (Shloyme) Mikhoels ( yi, שלמה מיכאעלס lso spelled שלוימע מיכאעלס during the Soviet era russian: Cоломон (Шлойме) Михоэлс, – 13 January 1948) was a Latvian born Soviet Jewish actor and the ar ...
, the popular actor and director of the Moscow State Jewish Theatre, was appointed the JAC chairman. Other members were Der Nister,
Itzik Feffer
Itzik Feffer (10 September 1900 – 12 August 1952), also Fefer (Yiddish איציק פֿעפֿער, Russian Ицик Фефер, Исаàк Соломòнович Фèфер) was a Soviet Yiddish poet executed on the Night of the Murdered Poe ...
,
Peretz Markish
Peretz Davidovich Markish ( yi, פּרץ מאַרקיש ) (russian: Перец Давидович Маркиш) (7 December 1895 (25 November OS) – 12 August 1952) was a Russian Jewish poet and playwright who wrote predominantly in Yiddish.
...
and Samuel Halkin. They wrote texts and petitions as cries for help against the Nazi pogroms. Among others, the texts were printed in U.S. newspapers. The JAC also raised funds.
In 1947, Der Nister made a trip to
Birobidzhan
Birobidzhan ( rus, Биробиджа́н, p=bʲɪrəbʲɪˈdʐan; yi, ביראָבידזשאַן, ''Birobidzhan'') is a types of inhabited localities in Russia, town and the administrative center of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, Russia, locat ...
, the USSR Jewish Autonomous Region near the Chinese border. He traveled there on a special migrant train, together with a thousand Holocaust survivors, to evaluate the development of the self-governing Jewish settlement in this area. However, very soon Stalin changed policy to the extermination of Jewish writers and the destruction of Jewish culture in the Soviet Union. In February 1949, Der Nister was one of the last of the Jewish writers arrested. The Soviet authorities officially reported Der Nister died on 4 June 1950 in an unknown Soviet prison hospital. Many of Der Nister's contemporaries would be killed in August 1952 in the
Night of the Murdered Poets
The Night of the Murdered Poets (; yi, הרוגי מלכות פֿונעם ראַטנפאַרבאַנד, translit=Harugey malkus funem Ratnfarband, lit=Soviet Union Martyrs) was the execution of thirteen Soviet Jews in the Lubyanka Prison in Mosco ...
, including Itzik Feffer, Peretz Markish, David Hofstein, Leib Kvitko and David Bergelson.
Der Nister's last writings, describing the persecution and destruction of the Jewish communities in Europe under the
Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
regime, and hinting at Soviet persecution as well, were collected in a work, ''Vidervuks'', published posthumously in 1969.
Israel Joshua Singer
Israel Joshua Singer (Yiddish: ישראל יהושע זינגער ; November 30, 1893, Biłgoraj, Congress Poland — February 10, 1944 New York) was a Polish-Jewish novelist who wrote in Yiddish.
Biography
He was born Yisruel Yehoyshye Zinger ...
, another famous Yiddish novelist, once said of Der Nister that "had writers of the whole world been given a chance to read iswork, they would have broken their pens.”
Burial site
For more than a half-century after his death in captivity, Der Nister's place of death was not known to the public. In August 2017, researchers from Israel and Russia located his remains at a prisoner cemetery in the village of Abez, near
Vorkuta
Vorkuta (russian: Воркута́; kv, Вӧркута, ''Vörkuta''; Nenets for "the abundance of bears", "bear corner") is a coal-mining town in the Komi Republic, Russia, situated just north of the Arctic Circle in the Pechora coal basin ...
, where he was recorded to have died on June 4, 1950. The researchers set up an improvised memorial atop his unmarked grave consisting of a Star of David fashioned from barbed wire.
Works
Even in his earliest works, he was drawn to the arcane teachings of the
Kabbalah
Kabbalah ( he, קַבָּלָה ''Qabbālā'', literally "reception, tradition") is an esoteric method, discipline and school of thought in Jewish mysticism. A traditional Kabbalist is called a Mekubbal ( ''Məqūbbāl'' "receiver"). The defin ...
and to the intense use of symbols in his writings.
His best-known work, ''Di mishpokhe Mashber'' ("The Family Mashber"), is a naturalistic
family saga
The family saga is a genre of literature which chronicles the lives and doings of a family or a number of related or interconnected families over a period of time. In novels (or sometimes sequences of novels) with a serious intent, this is often ...
. The work is a realistically written description of Jewish life in his native city Berdychiv at the end of the 19th century, with the three brothers as main actors: Moshe is a proud business man; Luzi is a skeptic mystic and benefactor who believes with brave defiance in the eternity of the Jewish people, probably a self-representation of Kahanovich; and Alter is a philanthropic altruist. David Roskies calls the depiction of the protagonist, Moshe, "the most finely wrought portrait of a hasidic merchant in all of Yiddish literature." As in the novel, whose protagonist's brother joins the Breslover Hasidim, Pinchas's brother Aaron did the same. Der Nister himself was influenced by Rebbe Nachman's Hasidic parables, though this manifests in his fiction, Roskies argues, through a filter of Russian modernism, and authors like
Andrei Bely
Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev ( rus, Бори́с Никола́евич Буга́ев, p=bɐˈrʲis nʲɪkɐˈlajɪvʲɪtɕ bʊˈɡajɪf, a=Boris Nikolayevich Bugayev.ru.vorb.oga), better known by the pen name Andrei Bely or Biely ( rus, Андр ...
also influenced his work.
''Di mishpokhe Mashber'' ("The Family Mashber") was translated into Hebrew in 1962, into French in 1984, into English by
Leonard Wolf
Leonard Wolf (March 1, 1923 – March 20, 2019) was a Romanian-American poet, author, teacher, and translator. He is known for his authoritative annotated editions of classic gothic horror novels, including '' Dracula'', ''Frankenstein'', ''The ...
in 1987, into German in 1990, and into Dutch in 2002 by Willy Brill.
Der Nister appears as one of the main characters in the novel ''The World to Come'' (2006) by Dara Horn. The book describes Kahanovich's uneasy friendship with artist Marc Chagall, inside whose frames he hid some of his writings. Adaptations, descriptions, and excerpts from his stories, and those of other Yiddish writers, are included. (Horn makes one fictional change: Der Nister dies almost as soon as arrested, whereas in reality he died the following year, or maybe as late as 1952 according to some sources).
Selected works
* ''Gedankn un motivn — lider in proze'' ("Ideas and Motifs — Prose Poems"), Vilna, 1907
* ''Hekher fun der erd'' ("Higher than the Earth"), Warsaw, 1910
* ''Gezang un gebet'' ("Song and Prayer"), Kiev, 1912 (collection of songs)
* Translation of selected tales from Hans Christian Andersen, 1918
* ''Mayselekh in ferzn'' ("Stories in Verse"), 1918/19 (many editions: Kiev, Warsaw, Berlin)
* ''Gedakht'' ("Imagined"), Berlin, 1922/23 (collection of fantastic stories, 2 vols.)
* ''Fun mayne giter'' ("From My Estates"), Kiev, 1929
* ''Hoyptshtet'' ("Capital Cities"), Moscow, 1934
* ''Zeks mayselekh'' ("Six Little Tales"), 1939
* ''Di mishpokhe Mashber'' ("The Family Mashber"), Kiev, 1939 (Vol. 1), New York, 1948 (Vol. 2)
* ''Korbones'' ("Victims"), Moscow, 1943
* ''Dertseylungen un eseyen'' ("Stories and Essays"), New York, 1957 (posthumous)
* ''Vidervuks'' ("Regeneration"), Moscow, 1969 (posthumous)
References
Bibliography
* Delphine Bechtel: ''Der Nister’s Work 1907–1929: A Study of a Yiddish Symbolist.'' Bern 1990 (= «Contacts» Etudes et Documents, III, 11).
* Delphine Bechtel: ''Der Nister’s ‘Der Kadmen’: a Metaphysical Narration on Cosmogony and Creation.'' , Yiddish, vol. VIII, n° 2, New York, 1992, p. 38–54.
* Saul Kaleko, Artikel ''NISTER'', in: ''Jüdisches Lexikon,'' Bd. IV/1, Berlin 1927. (German)
* Ber Kotlerman: ''Broken Heart / Broken Wholeness: The Post-Holocaust Plea for Jewish Reconstruction of the Soviet Yiddish Writer Der Nister.'' Academic Studies Press, Boston 2017
* Peter B. Maggs: ''The Mandelstam and „Der Nister“ Files: An Introduction to Stalin-Era Prison and Labor Camp Records.'' 1995.
* Daniela Mantovan-Kromer: ''Female Archetypes in Nister's Symbolist Short Stories.'' Jerusalem 1992 (Beitrag zur 4. International Conference in Yiddish Studies).
* Daniela Mantovan-Kromer: ''Der Nister's 'In vayn-keler'. A Study in Metaphor.'' In: ''The Field of Yiddish''. Fifth Collection, Northwestern University Press and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York 1993.
* Salman Reisen, ''Leksikon fun der Yidisher Literatur un Prese,'' 1926 ff., Vol. II. (Yiddish)
* Günter Stemberger, ''Geschichte der jüdischen Literatur,'' 1977. (German)
* ''Uncovering the Hidden: The Works and Life of Der Nister,'' ed. Estraikh Gennady, Hoge Kerstin, and Krutikov Mikhail. Studies in Yiddish 12, Legenda, Oxford 2014
*
Salomon Wininger
Salomon Wininger (; 13 December 1877, Gura Humora, Bukovina – December 1968, in Ramat Gan, Israel) was an Austrian-Jewish biographer. He has been called one of the greatest Jewish biographers of all time.
Before World War I, Wininger lived in ...
The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe
''The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe'' is a two-volume, English-language reference work on the history and culture of Eastern Europe Jewry in this region, prepared by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and published by Yale Univ ...