Poet, Novelist, Playwright

Peretz Markish

The great writer Peretz Markish was born a poor family in the Volhynian shtetl of Polonnoye on 7 December 1895.

He studied in kheder and began working a variety of odd jobs from an early age. He enlisted in the Tsarist army during the First World War and, after his discharge, settled in Ekaterinoslav in 1917.

Peretz Markish
7 December 1895 – 12 August 1952
Di khalyastre
In 1921, Markish moved to Warsaw, where he was part of the Khalyastre (Merry Gang) group of writers, producing an exciting, wholly modern Yiddish literature. He was a co-founder of the important weekly, "Literarishe bleter (Literary Pages)" and traveled extensively.. Here he is photographed in Paris with his Khalyastre colleague Oyzer Varshavski for the release of their second anthology in 1924 and H. Leivick, visiting from the U.S.
Soviet Poet
In 1926, Markish moved permanently to the Soviet Union, where he reached his creative stride at the start of the 1930s.As the most important poetic voice in the USSR, he was awarded the Order of Lenin in 1939. "Vokhnteg (Weekdays)" is a collection of poetry published in Moscow in 1931.
Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
During the Second World War, Markish was a member of the executive board of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and an editor of its journal, "Eynikayt (Unity)." Here he is in Vilna in January 1945 along with cultural figures who were active in the Vilna underground. His final play, "Der ufshtand fun geto (The Uprising of the Ghetto)," was about Vilna's resistance.