Literary archives of the Yiddish poet, Chaim Beider

Chaim Volkovich Beider (born 20 April 1920, Kupel, Volochisk district, Xmelnitsk region – Died 7 December 2003, New York, USA) was a Soviet writer and journalist, and one of the most prominent scholars of Yiddish culture in the Soviet Union. He was also a philologist. In 1933 he graduated from a local Jewish school, and the next year he entered Odessa Pedagogical College. His first literary poetical debut was published in 1933 in the Yiddish children’s newspaper, followed by many other Yiddish Soviet publications, including “Eynikayt” (an organ of the Jewish anti-fascist committee). He lived in Ukraine and published research about the history of Ukrainian and Russian literature, but starting in the mid-1970s he turned his attention to research of classical Jewish literature. He worked for several years as a journalist in Ukraine and Turkmenistan, and several years at a newspaper called “Birobidzhaner Shtern” in the Jewish Autonomous Region. In 1973, he moved to Moscow and started work for the journal “Sovetish Geimland,” first as a head of the department, and then deputy chief editor. He retired in 1991 and dedicated the rest of his life to the research of the history of Yiddish literature in the Soviet Union. This culminated with the dictionary of biographies of Russian and Soviet Yiddish writers and poets. In 1996, he moved to New York and became editor-in-chief of the oldest Yiddish literary journal “Di Tsukunft.” He died in New York in December 2003.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Forms part of the Claims Conference International Holocaust Documentation Archive at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. This archive consists of documentation whose reproduction and/or acquisition was made possible with funding from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum International Archives Project acquired the collection from Chaim Beider's widow and transferred the materials to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives in June 2007.