Ryhor Reles

Ryhor Lvovich Reles (Belarusian: Рыгор Рэлес, Russian: Гирш Релес; April 23, 1913 – September 19, 2004), also known as Hirsh Reles, was a Jewish-Belarusian writer. He published a number of short stories about his travels to Belarusian shtetls.^[1] He was one of the last writers in Belarus that wrote in Yiddish.

Reles was born in 1913 in Chashniki in the southeastern part of the Vitebsk region.^[2] His father Leib was a teacher at a cheder, while his mother was the daughter of a prosperous merchant family. In 1914, the German advance and the Russian Revolution disrupted the economic livelihood of his family and the larger Jewish community of Chashniki, although the expulsion of Jews from within the war zone did not reach Chashniki.^[2] In 1918, Chashniki was incorporated into the borders of the newly formed Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and the surrounding area was transferred to the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic in March 1924.^[2]

Reles' mother died in 1919 and his father began leaving Chashniki regularly to seek work, as his position as a melamed brought him under increasing government scrutiny.^[3] Reles stayed with his maternal grandfather, who cultivated an interest in Yiddish literature, including writers such as Sholem Aleichem. Reles spoke Belarusian and Russian as well as Yiddish, studying at a Soviet state-sponsored, Yiddish-language schoool, before moving to the local Belarusian-language school. He began to write poetry, initially in Belarusian, and then switched to Yiddish at the advice of his father.^[3]

His first poem was published in a Soviet Jewish newspaper entitled Der Yunger Arbeiter in 1930.^[4] He wrote poems and prose in Yiddish and also several poems in Russian.^[5] In 1931, after graduating high school, he joined his two sisters who had left Chashniki and moved to Vitebsk, the nearest large city. Reles studied pedagogy at the Vitebsk Jewish Pedagogical Tekhnikum, an institution that trained instructors for the type of Soviet Yiddish-language schools that Reles had attended.^[6][7] After a year, he transferred to the Film Technical School and enrolled in the Scenario Department.^[8] When he finished his studies in Vitebsk in September 1934, he was offered a job teaching in Yanavichy, but instead continued further pedagogical studies in Minsk.^[9] He submitted a number of poems to the literary journal Shtern, the premiere Yiddish-language publication in Belarus.^[9] When he received no reply, he went to the paper's editorial offices in Minsk, where the assistant editor Zelik Akselrod met with him and read his poems aloud. This was overheard by chief editor Izi Kharik from his office; Kharik accepted three out of four of Reles' works for publication. Kharik went on to become a mentor to Reles and, with Kharik's help, Reles was released from his teaching obligations in Yanavichy and was accepted into the Yiddish literature department of the Minsk Pedagogical Institute. With Akselrod and Kharik's recommendation, Reles was accepted to the Belarusian Writers' Union in 1936.^[10]

In late 1937, Reles left Minsk for a teaching position in a Yiddish school in Slutsk. In early 1939, he married his wife Yekha, and the couple soon had a daughter, Raisel.^[11] He continued to be active in Yiddish culture in Soviet Belarus and published his first poetry collection, Onheyb, in 1939, with Akselrod serving as the book's editor.^[11]

Eventually Reles left Slutsk for another teaching position in Novogrudok and was joined by his wife and daughter; he also served as the content director for a local radio station.^[12][13] In early June 1941, he returned to Minsk to visit Akselrod, only to discover that Akselrod had been arrested along with two other well-known Yiddish writers on 30 May 1941 and was being held in a Minsk prison.^[14] Kharik had already been imprisoned, tortured, and executed by this time.

Reles joined the Red Army in the early part of 1941, fleeing the advancing German forces during the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.^[4] On July 3, German troops entered Novogrudok where his wife and daughter were still living; they were caught by the Nazis and murdered in the Holocaust.^[4][15]

After surviving the war in the Ural Mountains, Reles was demobilized from the army in late 1941, initially to join a road-cleaning crew, but then was recommended by his superiors as the editor of the district newspaper, Stroyitel' in Gremyachinsk.

After the war, Reles struggled to find work with Yiddish publications. He began writing in Russian for a number of journals and newspapers.^[16] He also began using the formal name 'Grigorii' or the less formal 'Girsh and Grisha' for his professional work.^[16]

In 1948, Reles left his position on the staff of the journal Vozhyk after other editors informed him he was at the risk of investigation.^[17] Lacking other employment opportunities, Reles took a job teaching Russian literature and language at a night school.^[17] He began to publish in Yiddish again in 1961 in the Moscow-based journal Sovetish heymland, and went on to publish several collections of short stories and poetry in Yiddish, Belarusian, and Russian.^[18]

Most of his works were translated and published in Belarusian. In the 1990s and early 2000s, he was an active contributor to the Minsk Jewish Cultural Association.^[19] In 1997, he published his memoirs in Russian, V krayu svetlykh berez (In the Land of Light Birch Trees) as a cultural poirtrait of Yiddish life in Belarus from 1930s.^[18] At the time of his death, at age 91, he had outlived the Soviet Union and was considered the "patriarch of Jewish writers in Belarus".^[20]

• Koerber, Jeffrey (2020-02-06). Borderland Generation: Soviet and Polish Jews under Hitler. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 978-0-8156-5465-0.