Fraye Arbayter Shtime
(Free Voice of Labor)
Saturday, September 6, 1919, Page 1
New York and Philadelphia
Translated from the Yiddish by
Mindy Liberman
Jacob Dinezon Has Died
From Warsaw comes the sad news that the well-known Yiddish writer Jacob Dinezon has died there at the age of 63.
Dinezon was born in 1856 in Nay Zhager, Kovno Prov., in a poor but prestigious family. He was educated in Mohilev, where he attended both cheder and a house of study, the first education of a young maskil of the time. He began his literary activities in the same way as other maskilim of the period, with scientific articles intended to teach the people. However, he quickly moved to the novel. The first was a long novel, Beoven avos (For the Sins of the Fathers), that did not pass the censor. He immediately wrote Der shvartser yungermantshik (The Dark Young Man), and so began his fame.
Besides these works, Dinezon wrote many shorter stories and articles, translated several volumes of world history and Jewish history, and so on. During the last years before the war, he published little of his own work. The greater reading public remembered the dear, kind Dinezon from his earlier work, but for the circle of Yiddish writers, Dinezon was a close friend, a provider, an “uncle,” as he was called.
He was the closest and most intimate friend of I. L.Peretz. All those who felt like students or children in Peretz’s house came to Uncle Dinezon with all their concerns, and he always had enough time for everyone.
During the five years of the war, Dinezon’s name became so closely linked to the work with the war orphans that when one mentions him, Dinezon’s schools, Dinezon’s children’s homes, Dinezon’s small children come involuntarily to mind. The classic Yiddish writer made way for the father of the poor orphans whom the war drove into Warsaw by the thousands.