Aron Vergelis

Aron Vergelis (Yiddish: אהרן װערגעליס; Russian: Аро́н А́лтерович Верге́лис; 7 May 1918, in Liubar (now in Zhitomyr Oblast) – 7 April 1999, in Moscow) was a Soviet poet and Jewish journalist who wrote in Yiddish.

Vergelis attended high school in Birobidzhan, Soviet Union, where his parents had moved in 1932 (Jewish Autonomous Oblast).[1] He published his first works in 1935 and his first collection of poems in 1940, the same year he graduated from the Lenin Moscow Pedagogical Institute.[2] He took part in World War II, worked as an editor of Yiddish-language radio broadcasts and after the war as secretary of the Jewish department of the Union of Soviet Writers.[3]

He was one of the few Jewish writers who managed to avoid the purges of 1948–1953.[4] In 1955, he became a member of the CPSU.[5] From 1961 on, he served as editor-in-chief of the Yiddish-language journal Sovetish Heymland (Soviet Homeland)[6] while participating in Soviet anti-Zionist campaigns.

  1. ^ Encyclopaedia Judaica, second edition, volume 20, p. 510. ISBN 0-02-865948-1
  2. ^ Bol'shaya sovetskaya entsiklopediya, vol. 4, p. 526
  3. ^ Encyclopaedia Judaica, second edition, volume 20, p. 510. ISBN 0-02-865948-1
  4. ^ https://eleven.co.il/article/10891 (in Russian)
  5. ^ Bol'shaya sovetskaya entsiklopediya, vol. 4, p. 526
  6. ^ Encyclopaedia Judaica, second edition, volume 20, p. 510. ISBN 0-02-865948-1