David (or Dovid) Bergelson (דוד בערגעלסאָן) (August 12, 1884–August 12, 1952) was a Yiddish language writer. Ukrainian-born, he lived for a time in Berlin, Germany. He moved back to the Soviet Union when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. He was ultimately executed during Josef Stalin's anti-semitic campaign against "rootless cosmopolitans". August 12 is the 224th day of the year (225th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1884 is a leap year starting on Tuesday (click on link to calendar). ... August 12 is the 224th day of the year (225th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1952 was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Yiddish (Yid. ...   Berlin? (pronounced: , German ) is the capital of Germany and its largest city, with 3,426,000 inhabitants (as of January 2005); down from 4. ...   Adolf Hitler? (April 20, 1889–April 30, 1945) was the Chancellor of Germany from 1933, and Führer und Reichskanzler (Leader and Chancellor) of Germany from 1934, to his death. ... Joseph Stalin Iosif (Joseph) Vissarionovich Stalin (Russian: Иосиф Виссарионович Сталин), original name Ioseb Jughashvili (Georgian: იოსებ ჯუღაშვილი; see Other names section) (December 21, 18791 – March 5, 1953) was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a political leader in the Soviet Union. ... The Eternal Jew: 1937 German poster. ... Rootless cosmopolitan (Russian language: безродный космополит, bezrodny kosmopolit) was a Soviet euphemism during Joseph Stalins anti-Semitic campaign of 1948-1953, which culminated in the exposure of the alleged Doctors plot. The term and the persecutions by the authorities unmistakably targeted the Jews. ...

Born in the Ukrainian shtetl of Okhrimovo (also known as Okhrimovka, now Sarny), near Uman, he first became known as a writer in the wake of the failed Russian Revolution of 1905. From a Hasidic background, but having received both religious and secular education, much of his writing is reminiscent of Anton Chekhov: stories of "largely secular, frustrated young people…, ineffectual intellectuals…",^[1] frustrated by the provincial shtetl life. Writing at first in Hebrew and Russian, he only met success when he turned to his native Yiddish; his first successful book was Arum Vokzal (At the Depot) a novella, published at his own expense in 1909 in Warsaw. A shtetl or shtetele (שטעטל, meaning little town/city in Yiddish) was typically a small town or village with a large Jewish population in pre-Holocaust Central Europe and Eastern Europe. ... Sarny (Сарни in Ukrainian, meaning deer, pl. ... The Russian Revolution of 1905 was a country-wide spasm of both anti-government and undirected violence. ... Hasidim can refer to Saintly Pharisees Hasidic Judaism This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Chekhovs portrait by Osip Braz. ... Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family spoken by 6 million people mainly in Israel, parts of the Palestinian territories, the United States and by Jewish communities around the world. ... A novella is a short, narrative, prose fiction work. ... Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw Warsaw (Polish: Warszawa, see also other names, in full The Capital City of Warsaw, Polish: Miasto StoÅ‚eczne Warszawa) is the capital of Poland and its largest city. ...

In 1917, he founded the avant garde Jidishe Kultur Lige (Yiddish Culture League) in Kiev. In spring 1921 he moved to Berlin, which would be his base throughout the years of the Weimar Republic, although he traveled extensively through Europe and also visited the United States. According to J. Hoberman, he was "the best-known (and certainly the best-paid) Russian Yiddish writer of the 1920s"^[2]. Until the mid-1920s he wrote for the New York City-based Yiddish-language newspaper The Forward. Fountain by Marcel Duchamp. ... A monument to Archangel Michael, the protector of Kiev, with todays city center in the background. ... The period of German history from 1919 to 1933 is known as the Weimar Republic IPA (German Weimarer Republik). ... World map showing location of Europe When considered a continent, Europe is the worlds second smallest continent in terms of area, with an area of 10,600,000 km² (4,140,625 square miles), making it larger than Australia only. ... Midtown Manhattan, looking north from the Empire State Building, 2005 New York City (officially named the City of New York) is the most populous city in the United States, the most densely populated major city in North America, and is at the center of international finance, politics, entertainment, and culture. ... The Forward is a Jewish-American newspaper published in New York. ...

His 1926 essay "Three Centers" expressed a belief that the Soviet Union (where Yiddish language and literature were then receiving official patronage) had eclipsed the assimilationist United States and backwards Poland as the great future locus of Yiddish literature. He began writing for the Communist Yiddish press in both New York (Morgn Frayhayt) and Moscow (Emes), and moved to the Soviet Union in 1933, around the time the Nazis came to power in Germany. Assimilation, from Latin assimilatio meaning to render similar, is used to describe various phenomena: The process of assimilating new ideas into a schema (cognitive structure). ... This article is about communism as a form of society and as a popular movement. ... Saint Basils Cathedral and Spasskaya Tower of Moscow Kremlin at Red Square. ... Look up Nazi in Wiktionary, the free dictionary The term Nazi typically refers to someone who affiliates oneself with or is percieved to be affiliated with the ideology of the former National Socialist German Workers Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, commonly called NSDAP or the Nazi Party). ...

He was positively impressed with the Jewish Autonomous Republic of Birobidzhan, and participated in the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee during World War II. However, like many Jewish writers, he was a target of Stalin's anti-semitic campaign against "rootless cosmopolitans". Arrested in January 1949, he was tried secretly and executed by a firing squad, August 12, 1952. After Stalin's death, his reputation was "rehabilitated", and his complete works were published in the Soviet Union in 1961. The Jewish Autonomous Oblast (Евре́йская автоно́мная о́бласть - Yevreyskaya avtonomnaya oblast; formerly Jewish Autonomous Republic) is situated in the Far Eastern federal district of Russia, bordering China. ... Birobidzhan (ru: Биробиджа́н, yi: ביראָבידזשאן) is the capital of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in Russia; the name is sometimes also used to refer to the entire oblast. ... The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC, Russian language: Еврейский анти-фашистский комитет, ЕАК) was formed in Kuibyshev in April 1942 with the official support of the Soviet authorities. ... World War II was a truly global conflict with many facets: immense human suffering, fierce indoctrinations, and the use of new, extremely devastating weapons like the atom bomb World War II, also known as the Second World War, was by far the bloodiest, most expensive, and most significant war in... Execution by firing squad is a method of capital punishment, especially in times of war. ... August 12 is the 224th day of the year (225th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1952 was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ...

Works

The following is a partial list of Bergelson's works.

• Arum Vokzal (At the Depot, novella, 1909)
• Departing (novella, 1913)
• Nokh Alemen; title variously translated as When All Is Said and Done (1977 English-language title) or The End of Everything.
• Divine Justice (novel, 1925)
• "Three Centers" (essay, 1926)
• Storm Days (short stories, 1928)
• Baym Dnieper (At the Dnieper, novel, 1932)
• The Jewish Autonomous Region (pamphlet published by the Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow)
• Naye Dersteylungen (New Representations, war stories, 1947)

Translations into English

• The Stories of David Bergelson: Yiddish Short Fiction from Russia, translated and with an introduction by Golda Werman, foreword by Aharon Appelfeld. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1996.
• Shadows of Berlin (seven short stories and a feuilleton from The Forward, translated into English by Joachim Neugroschel, 2005). City Lights Books, June 2005, ISBN 0872864448.

Notes

• ^  Hoberman, 34.
• ^  Hoberman, 36.

References

• Hoberman, J., "The Twilight Zone", in The Nation, August 29/September 5, 2005, p. 34-38.
• Biographical notes, in Italian, on the site of Antenati.
• Bergelson, David: Russian Yiddish Writer on the Museum of Tolerance site.
• Rosenwald, Larry, review of The Stories of David Bergelson, The Mendele Review: Yiddish Language and Literature, Vol. 01.001, April 13, 1997. Includes a passage from his writing, with multiple translations for comparison, and discusses questions about translating Bergelson.
• Rubenstein, Joshua The Night of the Murdered Poets, originally published in The New Republic, August 25, 1997, later republished as the introduction to Stalin's Secret Pogrom: The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, May 2001, Yale University Press.
• Dovid Bergelson on the site of the National Yiddish Book Center, includes a 1959 article about Bergelson from Morgn Frayhayt.