Rachel Korn
{{short description|Yiddish poet and author}}
{{Infobox writer
| name = Rachel Korn
| image = File:Rachel Korn.jpg
| image_size = 250px
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| caption = Rachel Korn, {{circa|1930}}
| native_name = רחל קאָרן
| native_name_lang = yi
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| birth_date = {{birth date|1898|01|15}}
| birth_place = Galicia, Austria-Hungary
| death_date = {{death date and age|1982|09|09|1898|01|15}}
| death_place = Montreal, Quebec, Canada
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| language = Yiddish
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Rachel (Rokhl) Häring Korn ({{langx|yi|רחל קאָרן}}, 15 January 1898 – 9 September 1982) was a Polish-born Canadian Yiddish language poet and author. In total, she published eight collections of poetry and two of prose. Seymour Mayne characterized her in 1985, three years after her death, as "the first major woman poet in Canadian literature."{{cite web |last1=Mayne |first1=Seymour |author1-link=Seymour Mayne |title=English/Yiddish Literary Evening in memory of Rokhl Korn on the occasion of the Rokhl Korn Archives of the JPL |url=https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/collections/archival-recordings/frances-brandt/fbr-1286_5281/english-yiddish-literary-evening-memory-rokhl-korn-anna-gonshor-seymour-mayne |publisher=Yiddish Book Center |access-date=2023-02-27 |date=October 13, 1985}} 22:15.
Biography
Korn was born in eastern Galicia on a farming estate near Pidlisky (now in Ukraine),Levitan, Seymour (1 March 2009). "[http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/korn-rokhl-haring Rokhl Häring Korn]." Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. Jewish Women's Archive. Retrieved from www.jwa.org on 2016-04-21. and started writing poetry at an early age.
At the start of the First World War, her family fled to Vienna, returning to Poland in 1918. It was in this year that Korn's first published works appeared, in Nowy Dziennik, a Zionist newspaper, and in Głos Przemyski, a socialist journal. These items were published in Polish, but a year later she published her first Yiddish poem in the Lemberger Tageblatt.{{cite EJ|author=Levitan, Seymour|title=Korn, Rachel Häring|volume=12|page=311}} Her recognition grew with the publication of her first volumes of poetry: Dorf (Village, 1928) and Royter mon (Red Poppies, 1937). Her first collection of prose, Erd (Land), was published in 1936.
Korn was in Białystok when the German invasion of the Soviet Union took place in June 1941; she was evacuated by Soviet authorities to Uzbekistan along with other prominent Jewish writers.{{cite book |last1=Grosman |first1=Moisheh |title=In farkishufṭn land fun legendarn Dzshugashṿili mayne zibn yor lebn in Raṭnfarband, 1939-1946 |date=1949 |publisher=Emes un Frayhayt |location=Paris |page=11 |url=https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/collections/yiddish-books/spb-nybc209039 |language=yi}} She eventually relocated to Moscow, where she remained until the end of the war. She returned to Poland in 1946, immigrating to Montreal, Canada in 1948.
In Canada she emerged as one of the top Yiddish poets of the postwar era.{{cite book |last1=Zitnitzky |first1=Pincas Lazaro |title=A halber yorhunderṭ Idishe liṭeraṭur |date=1952 |publisher=Eygns |location=Buenos Aires |page=76 |url=https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/collections/yiddish-books/spb-nybc213374 |language=yi}} Korn's fourth collection of poetry, Heym un heymlozikayt (Home and Homelessness), was published in 1948. She remained in Montreal, writing poetry, until her death in 1982.
Awards
- Louis Lamed Prize for poetry and prose (1950 and 1958)
- Jewish Book Council of America Certificate of Honor and Award for Yiddish Poetry (1969)
- The H. Leivick Prize (1972)
- The Itzik Manger Prize of the State of Israel (1974)
References
{{reflist}}
External links
{{Wikiquote}}
- "[http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0012_0_11481.html Korn, Rachel Häring]," at the Jewish Virtual Library. Source: 2nd Ed. The Gale Group, 2008
- [https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Korn_Rokhl Korn, Rohkl], The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe
- "[http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/korn-rokhl-haring Rokhl Häring Korn]" at the Jewish Women's Archive
- [https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/search/person/%22%D7%A7%D7%90%D7%A8%D7%9F%2C%20%D7%A8%D7%97%D7%9C%20%D7%94%22 Rokhl Korn books (in Yiddish)] in the Yiddish Book Center digital library
- [https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/collections/archival-recordings/frances-brandt/fbr-1286_5281/english-yiddish-literary-evening-memory-rokhl-korn-anna-gonshor-seymour-mayne English/Yiddish Literary Evening in memory of Rokhl Korn on the occasion of the Rokhl Korn Archives of the JPL], Jewish Public Library (Montreal), October 13, 1985. On the site of the Yiddish Book Center.
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Category:Yiddish-language poets
Category:Polish emigrants to Canada
Category:Jewish Canadian writers
Category:Writers from Montreal
Category:Jews from Galicia (Eastern Europe)
Category:Canadian people of Polish-Jewish descent
Category:20th-century Polish poets
Category:20th-century Canadian women writers
Category:20th-century Canadian writers
Category:Yiddish culture in Quebec
Category:20th-century Polish women