Warshavsky, Yakir
WARSHAVSKY, YAKIR
WARSHAVSKY, YAKIR (1885–1942), Yiddish and Hebrew novelist and journalist. Born in Mlawa, Poland, to a ḥasidic merchant family, Warshavsky received a traditional education and studied secular subjects on his own. He worked as a Hebrew teacher, an official in Jewish institutions, and a Zionist organizer, as well as writing articles, stories and sketches for various Yiddish and Hebrew periodicals, influenced by his townsman and classmate, Joseph *Opatoshu. Articles about his 1914 trip to Palestine became the basis for his first book, Min ha-Moledet ("From the Homeland," 1919). His collection of tales, Di Letste ("The Last Ones," 1929), described Polish ḥasidic life vividly and sympathetically. He lived in Warsaw, continuing to work and write during World War ii in the Warsaw Ghetto until his murder by the Nazis in the summer of 1942.
bibliography:
Rejzen, Leksikon, 1 (1926), 921–3; lnyl, 3 (1960), 314–5; Pinkes Mlave (1950), 216, 280–6; Kressel, Leksikon, 1 (1965), 709–10. add. bibliography: S. Liptzin, A History of Yiddish Literature (1985), 431.
[Melech Ravitch/
Lily O. Kahn (2nd ed.)]