37. [Holocaust-Era Stories In Binding from Leading Modernist Soviet Jewish Graphic Artist; See Also Nr. 29 Above] Dobrushin, Yekhezkel. Aron Hefter [Gefter], cover design

HAYSE HERTSER: FARTSEYKHENUNGEN [HEYSE HERTZER] (xt) הייסע הערצער: פארצייכענונגענ

Moskve [Moscow]: Melukhe-farlag der emes, 1943. Item #43144

1st edition. Original period modernist-typeface covers designed by Aron Hefter, bound into stiff pamphlet protector, 12mo, 29 pages, 20 cm. In Yiddish. Title translates as, “Hot Hearts: Presentations.” A collection of short stories. 1 of 4,000 copies printed.
Cover design by the painter and caricaturist Aron Hefter (aka, Gefter, 1894-1963). Hefter studied at Vilna Art School from 1912 to 1915, and then, from 1921 to 1924, at VKHUTEIN, under V. Favorskii, S. Gerasimov, and D. Kardovskii. Starting in1925, Hefter began to design periodicals and posters, publishing caricatures of politicians, clerics, and public figures of the Jewish theater and literature, as well as constructivist compositions and photomontages. In 1934, an exhibition of his work was held in Moscow.
Yekhezkel Dobrushin (1883–1953) was a “literary researcher, playwright, poet, and prose author, born in the village of Mutyn, Ukraine…In 1902 he moved abroad, studied there in the free Russian high school, and subsequently continued his education at the Sorbonne” where he passed his law faculty exams. “He was chairman of the Parisian organization of the Socialist Zionist Party” and “returned home in 1909….In 1916 he settled in Kiev. In 1917 he was active in the united socialist party.
He was one of the founders of the ‘Kultur-lige’ (Culture league), as well as a member of its central committee and its executive bureau. He was a teacher of Yiddish literature in the Jewish state people’s university, in the teachers’ seminary, and in other higher educational institutions. He began his literary activities in Hebrew in Hatsfira (The siren), and in Yiddish in Vokhnblat (Weekly newspaper) edited by Hillel Tsaytlin. From 1920 he was living in Moscow where he was active in local Jewish cultural institutions. He was secretary of the first Jewish writers’ organization in Moscow. Having received the title of professor, he gave lectures at the University for Nationalities of the West, in the academy for education, in the Jewish state chamber theater, in the theatrical studio of the Kultur-lige, and in the Jewish section of the Second Moscow University [now, Moscow State Pedagogical University], among others….
He took an active part in publishing and editing the publications of the ‘Kultur-lige’: [including] the children’s magazines…; Bikher-velt (Book world) in 1919; the journal Shtrom (Current) in Moscow in 1922-1924; Yungvald (Young forest) in 1924-1927; the anthology Sovetish (Soviet) in 1934-1941; and the Moscow newspaper Eynikeyt(Unity), 1942-1948.
He wrote on the topic of the Yiddish classical writers and about Soviet Yiddish writers from the oldest to the youngest. As a playwright he accomplished much for the Yiddish State Theater in Moscow. Aside from his own plays, he adapted for the stage a string of works by Mendele Moykher-Sforim, Sholem-Aleykhem, Goldfaden, and others.…
In the late 1920s he was visiting all the new Jewish settlements in Crimea, finding there images for his work….The migrants dubbed one of their settlements ‘Dobrushino.’
Dobrushin also invested a great deal in the development of the Yiddish theater. He served as literary director of the Moscow Yiddish State Theater.
On March 31, 1939 he was awarded by the Soviet government with an ‘honorary degree’ ‘for extraordinary service in the development of Soviet theatrical art.’
In the history of Soviet Yiddish literature, Dobrushin acquired an extraordinary reputation for his literary criticism and research work. This began with two short books— Aleksander blok, etyud (Study of Aleksander Blok) (Kiev: Jewish Section, State Publ., 1921), 28 pp.; and Gedankengang (Reasoning) (Kiev: Kultur-lige, 1922), 135 pp.—published 1921-1922 in Kiev. From that point forward, not a single important literary phenomenon transpired without his judgment. All well-known writers, 1920s-1940s, found a reflection in Dobrushin’s articles. His last great work was the monograph Dovid bergelson (Dovid Bergelson) (Moscow, 1947), 341 pp.
His contribution was important as well to the publication of the works by the Yiddish classical authors. When ‘Emes’ publishers undertook to bring out the collected writings of Sholem-Aleichem in 1935-1938 in fifteen volumes, Dobrushin wrote the prefatory remarks to volumes 1, 2, 3, 9, 14, and 15. He had begun his research on Sholem-Aleichem’s creative work before the Revolution. He published articles in anthologies dedicated to the second and third anniversaries of Sholem-Aleichem’s death, which appeared in Petrograd and Kiev in 1918 and 1919. Dozens of articles about Sholem-Aleichem were published under his pen.
Dobrushin was also well-known as an indefatigable researcher into Jewish folklore. In the Moscow anthology Sovetish, he published work…on classic as well as Soviet folklore among the Jewish masses. Virtually every collection of Yiddish folk songs and folk tales, published in the Soviet Union by an assortment of publishers, was accompanied with an article or commentary by Dobrushin.
He was a leading member of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in Moscow, particularly of its Historical Commission. After the war he wrote a great deal about Yiddish writers who died on the battlefields. He was arrested in early 1949. He suffered the punishment of exile to a camp near the Siberian city of Abez, and there he died” (Leksikon Fun Der Nayer Yidisher Literatur; full biography online at https://congressforjewishculture.org/people/5628/Dobrushin-Yekhezkel)
SU BJECT(S): World War, 1939-1945 -- Underground movements -- Soviet Union. Guerre mondiale, 1939-1945 -- Mouvements de re´sistance -- URSS. War -- Underground movements OCLC: 19312063.
Blindstamp to margin of title page, number on copyright page and final page, Library bookplate on inside of pamphlet protector, no other marks, Very Good Condition thus. (BK5) (YID-47-1-LX-'ccegg).

Price: $275.00