Lives in the Yiddish Theatre
SHORT BIOGRAPHIES OF THOSE INVOLVED IN THE Yiddish THEATRE
aS DESCRIBED IN zALMEN zYLBERCWEIG'S "lEKSIKON FUN YIDISHN TEATER"

1931-1969
 

Sam (Shmuel) Ogursky


Born on 15 April 1884 in Grodno, Polish Lithuania, into a working family. Until age thirteen he learned in a Talmud Torah, then he learned tailoring, and due to his activity in the Bundist movement, in 1905 he had to flee from Russia and settle in Leeds, England, from where he wrote correspondences for the anarchistic "Arbeyter fraynd". 1906 -- went away to America. Since 1913 was an insurance agent in Chicago and contributed in the local "Idishe arbeyter velt", where on 11 and 18 August 1916 his translation of "In shlakht hoyz" (a scene of the current war), by Dr. Henry T. Shnitkind.

In 1917 he, together with a group of Russian political émigrés, went away to Peterburg and there participated in an organized Jewish Bolshevik Commissariat in the province. At the end of 1918 he became Commissar of Jewish Matters (enenim) in the Vitebsk region, and he issued the decree against farmakhn Jewish khln. In August 1919 he returned to America, where he published articles about Soviet Russia, wherein he returned and became there one of the leaders in the Jewish Bolshevik journalism, literature critique, and scientific-Jewish work. He issued several books and edited Bovshover's songs and collections about Izzy Kharik, geklibene work for David Edelsthat and several volumes of Winchevsky's collected works.

O. in 1937 was arrested and sent away, returning to Moscow, he published in the Warsaw "Folks shtime" an article about the difficulties with creating a Jewish press that would have helped the Bolsheviks in their first years.
 

Sh. E. from Chaim-Leyb Fuchs.

  • "Lexicon of the New Yiddish Literature", New York, 1956, Vol. I, pp. 20-21.


 

 

 

 


 

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Adapted from the original Yiddish text found within the  "Lexicon of the Yiddish Theatre" by Zalmen Zylbercweig, Volume 6, page 5962.
 

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