Yiddish. 2 Antique books of Zalman Vendrov, Humorous stories, Poland, 1912, 1914, damaged
Vilna-Warsaw.
1. Familiar people. Humorous stories,Vilna, 1912, hard cover, 20 x 14 cm., cover worn, rubbed, some worm holes; binding started getting loose; one leaf detached.
2. Broad smile. Humorous stories, Warsaw-Vilna, 1914, 225 pp., hard cover, 21 x14.5 cm. Wear, rubbing worm holes; stains, tears to couple of pages.
Total weight: 600 gr.
Zalman Vendrov (real name David Efimovich Vendrovsky; January 17, 1877, Slutsk - October 1, 1971, Moscow) was a Soviet Jewish writer who wrote in Yiddish. In Russian, his works are known thanks to the translation of Riva Rubina.
Biography
Born and raised in Slutsk. He worked in Lodz at a weaving factory, about the activities of which in 1899 he published an article in the Krakow newspaper Der Yud. His report revealed the true "work" of light industry enterprises, which, instead of production, were engaged in the resale of defective goods and leftovers to small Jewish shops. After the release of the material, which was signed in his name, Vendrov was fired[1].
Soon he moved to England and Scotland[2], where he worked as a loader in a vegetable market, and attended college in the evenings. He published several works in Yiddish in the Jewish weekly Der Wanderer.
In 1905, he ended up in the USA, published his stories, feuilletons, journalism in the local press. In 1907, a collection of short stories “On a Heim” (“Without a Home”) was published, in 1912 - “Humoreskn un derceilungen” (“Humoresques and Stories”) and “Bakante Parshoynen” (“Familiar Faces”). His grandson's memoirs mention that Vendrov taught English to Jewish immigrants. In 1908, as a correspondent for the American publications Morgen Journal and Freie Arbeter Shtime, he went to Russia. In 1912, he published a two-volume short story entitled "Government", dedicated to the situation of the Jews in Russia, which was noted by the press and translated into Russian. Vendrov was particularly proud of the fact that excerpts from this book were quoted in the State Duma when discussing the Jewish question.
During the First World War, when the Tsarist government entered into an active struggle with the Jewish press, Vendrov supported the Jewish Committee for Relief of War Victims on the western and northwestern fronts. In a letter to a friend, he admits that he yearns for his work, “like a drunkard for vodka”, but he has 5,000 refugees on his hands: “Buckwheat, pearl barley and millet, flour, potatoes, shoes, leather, linen, clothes, hearths, schools , contagious barracks, etc. - that's what you have to think about day and night.
After the Revolution of 1917 he moved to Moscow, in 1919-1922 he worked as the head of the press department in the People's Commissariat of Railways. He sent articles to Jewish publications in New York (“Tog”, “Forverts”), London (“Di Zeit”), Vilna (“Tog”), Warsaw (“Der Moment”), published in the Kiev “Sovietish Literature”, Birobidzhan "Outpost", Moscow "Der Emes", whose publishing house in 1941 published his book of stories. During the Great Patriotic War, at the invitation of the writer Peretz Markish, he worked in the Jewish editorial office of the Moscow Radio, prepared materials for the Soviet Information Bureau and the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee.
In 1950 he was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in the camps, but for some reason (possibly because of his age) he served time in the Vladimir Central. He was released in 1954, after the death of Stalin, but was officially rehabilitated only a year and a half later. He spent the rest of his life in an apartment in the center of Moscow with his large extended family. In 1967 he published a collection of short stories "Undzer Gas" ("Our Street").
He raised his grandson Karl Valerianovich Vendrovsky (whose parents were repressed) together with his aunt, the famous Shakespearean literary scholar Lyubov Davidovna Vendrovsky.
Died in 1971. Buried at the Vvedensky cemetery
In 2004, in California (USA), where the family has been living since the 90s, Zalman Vendrov’s collection of stories in English “Such is Life” was published, which was translated from Yiddish into English by his great-niece Iren Jarrison.