Yiddish. Josef Kotliar. Mein welt. Lider, (My World) illust. by Rafael Chwoles, 1993,
Dedication of the family of the author in Yiddish, 1993.
Tel-Aviv, 270 pp., illustrated by Rafael Chwoles
Hard cover, 23 x 15 cm. good condition.
Weight: 530 gr.
Josef Kotliar (???? ???????? , Yosef Kotliar)
Yiddish poet, born in 1908 in Berdichev (Berdychiv, Russian ????????, Ukrainian ????????, Yidd. ??????????, Polish Berdyczów), then Volhynian Governorate of the Russian Empire, today Oblast (Province) Shito me, Ukraine. After the 1917 revolutions he lived in Kharkiv (Ukraine). There he studied at a pedagogical "technical center" and then at the Jewish branch of the Kharkiv Teachers' Institute. At the end of the 1920s he worked in the editorial team of the Jewish newspapers "Saj Grejt" and "Junge Garde". He published his first poems in the Berditschew newspaper “Di woch” in the mid-1920s. After the Second World War he lived in Vilnius, where he died in 1962. His first volume of poetry was published in 1930 in Kharkov: "Lichtik gebojrn" (Bright Birth), the last in 1948 in Moscow: "Ojsgelejste erd", Liberated Earth.
Among his lyrics: A lidele in Yiddish, baj mir bistu schejn (Soviet version of the song from 1933), dos lid fun hofnunk.
Rafael Chwoles (1913-2002) was born in Vilnius. He studied painting at the Jewish Artisans School Hilf durch arbet (Help Through Work). He made his debut in 1933, at the Exhibition of Young Painters, where he was awarded with first prize for a portrait. He belonged to the literary-artistic group Jung Vilne (Young Vilna), active between 1929 and 1939.
In 1940, he was appointed as the director of the Arts School in Nowa Wilejka. Following the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, he went into deep Soviet Union. He resided in the vicinity of the Gorki town (Ni?nyj Nowgorod). He was employed as a railway worker and earned additional money by painting portraits. In the summer of 1944, following the liberation of Vilnius from the German occupation, Chwoles returned to his hometown.As a result of being affected by the destruction in the city by both the Germans and the Soviets, he created a series of paintings titled Destroyed Ghetto – The Architecture of Old Vilnius. In 1959, he moved to Warsaw where an exhibition of his works entitled Motifs from the Vilna Ghetto was organised. In 1960, his exhibition Sites in the Homeland was presented in a few cities across Poland. In 1969, he left Poland and settled permanently in Paris. A memorial plaque in his honour was placed at 13 Tilto Street in Vilnius, where Chwoles lived between 1945 and 1956.