Metadata : Irma Druker
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
- 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:
- Irma Druker
- Title (official language):
- І. Х. Друкер
- Creator/accumulator:
- Irma Druker
- Date(s):
- 1932/1982
- Language:
- Russian
- Yiddish
- Ukrainian
- Extent:
- approx. 120 storage units
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Photographic images
- Scope and content:
- Fragments of the archive were transferred to the Odessa Literature Museum by the collection creator himself; and the rest was donated in December 1989 by his widow E. D. Val’man; aside from personal items, it contains manuscripts and typewritten author’s copies of several of the writer’s works (the novel Mikhoel-Yosef Guzikov; novellas on Mendele Moykher-Sforim and Sholom Aleichem; an essay titled “Latin Letters” on the famous klezmer musician Pedotser [This was the name by which the virtuoso violinist Avraham Kholodenko of Berdichev (1828-1902) was famous; one of the major representatives of the Eastern European klezmer tradition, Pedotser was called “the Jewish Paganini”]; the story “Full Speed Ahead”; autobiographical sketches titled “I Saw and Heard”; etc.); pads of paper containing literary notes (1960s); letters and telegram greetings, including from Solomon Mikhoels’s widow A. P. Pototskaia and the composer Dmitrii Shostakovich (1966); a portrait of Irma Druker by an artist who was a fellow camp inmate (1950s); and numerous individual and group photographs (with Perets Markish, I. Dobrodushnyi, A. Gurshtein, Ayzik Huberman, Khanan Vainerman, Note Lur’e, and others, 1932-70s). Also included are Druker’s USSR Union of Writers and Literature Fund membership cards (1956, 1958, and 1980); invitations to literary events and to a meeting with the editorial board and authors of the journal Sovetish heymland (1964); a programme from a literary-artistic evening devoted to Mendele Moykher-Sforim (undated); a notebook with newspaper clippings of publications connected with the author’s sixtieth jubilee; a commendation from the Odessa Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine and the Odessa Regional Executive Committee (1966-67); 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 writer and literary scholar Irma (Yirmiyohu) Khaimovich Druker (1906-82) was born in the town of Chernobyl’ (Kiev province; now Ivankiv/Ivankov district, Kyiv/Kiev region). In 1923 he enrolled in the vocal department of a music school in Kiev, and in 1929 at Odessa’s Jewish Pedagogical Technicum. He worked as head of the literature department of the newspaper Der odeser arbeter, and was director of the Jewish section of the Odessa Press House’s literary studio. His literary debut was the story “Dos ershte geyeg” (“The First Hunt”), and his longer tale “In the Steppe” (on Jewish resettlers) was published in 1929. He became a member of the USSR Union of Writers in 1935. On the eve of the war he also published several essays in literary history, including Sholem-Aleykhem: kritishe etyudn [Sholom Aleichem: Critical Sketches, 1939], and the first part of the novel Klezmer [translated into Russian as The Musicians, 1940], whose main character was based on the famous Odessa violinist and teacher P. S. Stoliarskii. In 1941-45 Druker served as a frontline correspondent for a division newspaper. Druker’s postwar literary activities were cut short when in May 1950, like his close friends Khanan Vainerman, Note Lur’e, and Ayzik Huberman, he was arrested on trumped-up charges of nationalist and anti-Soviet activities, and in June 1951 he was sentenced by the NKVD Special Conference to fifteen years in “correctional labor camp.” He was officially exonerated in 1956, whereupon he returned to Odessa and resumed work on the novel Klezmer (translated into Russian in 1964; the full Yiddish-language version was completed in 1976); and he wrote a series of novellas on Mendele Moykher-Sforim collectively titled Der zeyde Mendele [Grandpa Mendele], and novellas and essays on Sholom Aleichem, Itzik Fefer, Ḥayim Naḥman Bialik, Solomon Mikhoels, the novel Mikhoel-Yosef Guzikov, on the famous Jewish musical prodigy of the early twentieth century; etc. He was very ill in his final years. He died in Odessa.
- 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.
- Title:
- Irma Druker
- Title (official language):
- І. Х. Друкер
- Creator/accumulator:
- Irma Druker
- Date(s):
- 1932/1982
- Language:
- Russian
- Yiddish
- Ukrainian
- Extent:
- approx. 120 storage units
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Photographic images
- Scope and content:
- Fragments of the archive were transferred to the Odessa Literature Museum by the collection creator himself; and the rest was donated in December 1989 by his widow E. D. Val’man; aside from personal items, it contains manuscripts and typewritten author’s copies of several of the writer’s works (the novel Mikhoel-Yosef Guzikov; novellas on Mendele Moykher-Sforim and Sholom Aleichem; an essay titled “Latin Letters” on the famous klezmer musician Pedotser [This was the name by which the virtuoso violinist Avraham Kholodenko of Berdichev (1828-1902) was famous; one of the major representatives of the Eastern European klezmer tradition, Pedotser was called “the Jewish Paganini”]; the story “Full Speed Ahead”; autobiographical sketches titled “I Saw and Heard”; etc.); pads of paper containing literary notes (1960s); letters and telegram greetings, including from Solomon Mikhoels’s widow A. P. Pototskaia and the composer Dmitrii Shostakovich (1966); a portrait of Irma Druker by an artist who was a fellow camp inmate (1950s); and numerous individual and group photographs (with Perets Markish, I. Dobrodushnyi, A. Gurshtein, Ayzik Huberman, Khanan Vainerman, Note Lur’e, and others, 1932-70s). Also included are Druker’s USSR Union of Writers and Literature Fund membership cards (1956, 1958, and 1980); invitations to literary events and to a meeting with the editorial board and authors of the journal Sovetish heymland (1964); a programme from a literary-artistic evening devoted to Mendele Moykher-Sforim (undated); a notebook with newspaper clippings of publications connected with the author’s sixtieth jubilee; a commendation from the Odessa Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine and the Odessa Regional Executive Committee (1966-67); 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 writer and literary scholar Irma (Yirmiyohu) Khaimovich Druker (1906-82) was born in the town of Chernobyl’ (Kiev province; now Ivankiv/Ivankov district, Kyiv/Kiev region). In 1923 he enrolled in the vocal department of a music school in Kiev, and in 1929 at Odessa’s Jewish Pedagogical Technicum. He worked as head of the literature department of the newspaper Der odeser arbeter, and was director of the Jewish section of the Odessa Press House’s literary studio. His literary debut was the story “Dos ershte geyeg” (“The First Hunt”), and his longer tale “In the Steppe” (on Jewish resettlers) was published in 1929. He became a member of the USSR Union of Writers in 1935. On the eve of the war he also published several essays in literary history, including Sholem-Aleykhem: kritishe etyudn [Sholom Aleichem: Critical Sketches, 1939], and the first part of the novel Klezmer [translated into Russian as The Musicians, 1940], whose main character was based on the famous Odessa violinist and teacher P. S. Stoliarskii. In 1941-45 Druker served as a frontline correspondent for a division newspaper. Druker’s postwar literary activities were cut short when in May 1950, like his close friends Khanan Vainerman, Note Lur’e, and Ayzik Huberman, he was arrested on trumped-up charges of nationalist and anti-Soviet activities, and in June 1951 he was sentenced by the NKVD Special Conference to fifteen years in “correctional labor camp.” He was officially exonerated in 1956, whereupon he returned to Odessa and resumed work on the novel Klezmer (translated into Russian in 1964; the full Yiddish-language version was completed in 1976); and he wrote a series of novellas on Mendele Moykher-Sforim collectively titled Der zeyde Mendele [Grandpa Mendele], and novellas and essays on Sholom Aleichem, Itzik Fefer, Ḥayim Naḥman Bialik, Solomon Mikhoels, the novel Mikhoel-Yosef Guzikov, on the famous Jewish musical prodigy of the early twentieth century; etc. He was very ill in his final years. He died in Odessa.
- 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.
