Zolf
ZOLF
ZOLF , Canadian family. falek zolf (1898–1961), teacher, author, and essayist, was born in Poland. From 1909 to the outbreak of war in 1914, he attended yeshivah in Poland. In 1916, to avoid compulsory military service, he became an "essential worker" at a Jewish-owned leather factory in Yaroslavl, Russia. With the Kerensky revolution he volunteered for the Russian Army, was sent to the Galician front, was captured by the Germans, and, in 1918, became a prisoner of war in East Prussia. Returning home after his release, he found his mother dead and his village of Zastavia caught up in the civil war that followed the Bolshevik Revolution. A dedicated Labor Zionist, in 1920 Zolf worked in the Jewish reconstruction in postwar Poland, assisted by the American Joint Distribution Committee, and became a teacher at a rebuilt school.
As life became more and more difficult under the antisemitic Polish regime, in 1926 Zolf decided to emigrate. He arrived in Canada in 1926 as a "farm worker" but soon became an itinerant melammed (teacher). After more than a year in Canada, he brought his family to Winnipeg, where he became a teacher and later principal of Winnipeg's I.L. Peretz Folk School. His part-fictional autobiography Af Fremder Erd (On Foreign Soil, 1945) was republished in English translation in 2003 with some Yiddish transliteration by Martin Green. Zolf also published Undzer Kultur Hemshekh (Our Eternal Culture, 1956), and contributed essays to the Yiddish press.
Falek Zolf's fourth child, larry (1934– ), a reporter and producer, was born and brought up in Winnipeg's immigrant North End. Larry Zolf earned a B.A. at the University of Winnipeg, won scholarships, and completed an M.A. in history at the University of Toronto. He was with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's News and Current Affairs Department in Toronto from 1962. From 1964 to 1966 he worked on the innovative Canadian public affairs program, This Hour Has Seven Days, and teamed with Pierre Elliot Trudeau (before Trudeau entered parliament) to interview René Lévèsque, Quebec "Separatist" leader and founder of the Parti Québécois who led his party to power in Quebec in 1976. Zolf later wrote speeches for Prime Minister Trudeau. Zolf also produced an award-winning documentary on computers and published several books including Dance of the Dialectic (1973); Just Watch Me: Remembering Pierre Trudeau (1984); and Scorpions for Sale (1989), a fictional biography. He continued to write an on-line column for the cbc that mixed political commentary with personal reminiscences, often including references to his Jewish roots in the Winnipeg Jewish community, personalities in the community, community politics, and encounters with the non-Jewish world.
Larry Zolf's daughter, rachel zolf, is a poet whose works include Her Absence, This Wanderer (1999) and Masque (2004).
[Abraham Arnold (2nd ed.)]