Metadata: Khanan Vainerman
Collection
- Country:
- Ukraine
- Holding institution:
- Odessa Literature Museum
- Holding institution (official language):
- Одеський літературний музей
- Postal address:
- Ukraine, 65026, Odesa, ul. Lanzheronovskaia, 2
- Phone number:
- 380 (048) 722-3370
- Web address:
- http://museum-literature.odessa.ua/
- Email:
- litmuzodessa@gmail.com
- Title:
- Khanan Vainerman
- Title (official language):
- Вайнерман Х. А.
- Creator/accumulator:
- Khanan Vainerman
- Date(s):
- 1929/1977
- Language:
- Yiddish
- Russian
- Ukrainian
- Extent:
- 38 storage units
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Photographic images
- Scope and content:
- Included are the author’s manuscripts (in Yiddish and Russian) of his poems “The Heart,” “The Eyes,” “The Tomb in the Catacombs,” “Obituary (in memory of M. Ryl’skii)”), “O Ukrainian Woman,” “On Love,” “The Uprising,” “The Wall of Resistance,” “Venus de Milo,” “To the Heart,” “I am Ever Young” (undated), “Darling on the Black Sea” (1953), etc.; the text of a talk he gave that was broadcast on the radio titled “My Angry Protest” (“against the aggressive actions of higher-ups in Israel, which serve the interests of imperialism and Zionism,” undated); a letter by Shakhno Epshtein, a member of the main bureau of the Jewish section of the All-Ukrainian Union of Proletarian Writers, to the publishing house Molodaia Gvardiia recommending that the latter publish a Russian-language collection by the “Jewish peasant writer” Khanan Vainerman that “would mainly include poems on collectivization and dekulakization in Jewish colonies” (1931); letters and postcards addressed to Khanan Vainerman from S. Iu. Olender (1957, 1961-62) and V. N. Sosiura (1962), who translated works by the poet; manuscript texts of a review article on Khanan Vainerman by V. N. Sosiura (1960) and of S. P. Kovganiuk’s article “My Friend Khanan Vainerman” (1977). There are also letters inviting Khanan Vainerman to literary events; a photocopy of the program of a literary-artistic evening devoted to Mendele Moykher-Sforim (undated), and signs for the Book Day event on 31 March 1957, which involved Odessa writers, including Khanan Vainerman; the title page of the Ukrainian translation of Vainerman’s poetry collection Shchedra osin’ [A Lavish Autumn], with a dedicatory inscription from the author and from E. Bandurenko (the book’s editor) to the editor of the publishing house Radians'kyi pysmennyk, which published this collection (1970); photographs of Khanan Vainerman, including with his friends the writers I. Kh. Druker, A. Sh. Huberman, and N. M. Lur’e (1929-62); etc.
- Archival history:
- This was established pursuant to the decree of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine and the Ukrainian SSR Council of Ministers (15 July 1977) “On organizing a state museum of literature in the city of the Odessa” and was first opened to visitors in 1984. The Odessa Literature Museum is one of the largest regional literature museums in Ukraine, and includes four branches – museums commemorating A. S. Pushkin, K. G. Paustovskii, S. I. Oleinik, and Khristo Botev. The museum’s fonds currently house around 70,000 storage units.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- The Jewish poet and journalist Khanan Abramovich Vainerman (1902-79) was born in the town of Luginy (Ovruch county, Volhynia province; now a district centre of the Zhytomyr/Zhitomir region). From 1917-24, he worked as a cobbler, assistant painter, and theatre decorator, and from 1925-29 as a handyman at the Il’ich commune of the Kalinindorf district (Kherson area). He then moved to Odessa to study at a workers’ faculty, graduated from the Odessa Education Institute (1932), and contributed to the Jewish newspapers Der odeser arbeter, Zay greyt!, and Der shtern. His poetry was first published in 1925 and he published several poetry collections in the 1930s: In baheftung [In the Merging, 1930]; Erd banayte [The Renewed Land, 1932]; Nakht [Night, 1933]; Goldene tsvaygn (Golden Boughs, 1935); etc. He became a member of the USSR Union of Writers in 1934. In 1941 he was excused from military service due to poor eyesight, and was evacuated along with his family from Odessa. During the Second World War he worked at the Ordzhonikidze and Osh radio committees, and upon returning to Odessa in 1945, as a correspondent for Eynikayt [Unity], the newspaper of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, covering the southern districts of Ukraine. On 28 March 1950 he was arrested and charged with engaging in “active anti-Soviet nationalist activities,” being a spy for the United States, etc., and in April 1951 was sentenced by decree of the NKVD Special Conference (OSO) to fifteen years in “corrective labor camp.” He served his sentence in Special Camp No. 2 near Noril’sk. Upon reconsideration of his case, he was officially exonerated in 1956, whereupon he resumed his literary activity. His work was published in the journal Sovetish heymland. His final collection of poetry, A guter regn [A Kind Rain] was published in 1976. Several of Khanan Vainerman’s books were also published in Russian and Ukrainian translations. He died in Odessa.
- Access points: persons/families:
- Bandurenko, E.
- Druker, I. Kh.
- Epshtein, Shakhno
- Huberman, A. Sh.
- Kovganiuk, S. P.
- Lur’e, N.
- Mendele Moykher-Sforim
- Olender, S. Iu.
- Ryl’skii, M.
- Sosiura, V. N.
- Vainerman, Khanan
- System of arrangement:
- Materials on Jewish history and culture are housed in the Odessa Literature Museum’s collection that is not divided into fonds, where they are divided into various storage groups (“Manuscripts”; “Documents”; “Photographs”; “Visual Materials”), and in the archive of the Odessa Literature Museum. This description thus refers to an approximate collection.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary