Pass On, You Lonely Grandfathers . . .

Izi Charik was one the foremost Soviet Yiddish poets of his generation, noted for his ardent, if sometimes ambivalent, revolutionary zeal and ability to create dynamic verse in a wide variety of poetic styles. Rising to prominence at an early age, Charik edited many Soviet Yiddish literary journals in Moscow and Minsk, produced several widely read collections of poetry, and rapidly climbed the ranks in the Communist Party leadership in the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. By the late 1930s, many of Charik’s works were integrated into the Yiddish-language schools in Belorussia, and the writer had achieved a kind of celebrity status among certain sections of the republic’s Yiddish-speaking youth. At the same time, in 1937, Charik fell victim to the region’s particularly brutal Stalinist purges.