Mosche Altman

After living in Romania, France and Brazil, he came to Bucharest in the 1930s to publish the Yiddish magazine ‘Di woch’. Due to the rise of anti-Semitism in Romania at this time, Altman decided to move to Kishinev in 1940 and took on Soviet citizenship. He had to flee further east due to the events of the war and then, after the Soviet army took control of Czernowitz, became a dramaturge at the local State Yiddish Theatre. He was soon categorised as a so-called cosmopolitan, politically persecuted and finally arrested in 1949. He was imprisoned in a Soviet camp in Siberia until 1953. He was rehabilitated in 1955 and returned to Czernowitz, where he lived until his death on 21 October 1981.

Text: Markus Winkler

Sources:

1. Peter Rychlo, Oleg Liubkivskyj: City of Literature Chernivtsi. Chernivtsi 22009, pp. 97-103
2. Moyshe Lemster: Altman, Moyshe: In: The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe

Works by Mosche Altman (selection):

1. Trugbild (blendenisch). Erzählungen (1926)
2. Die Wiener Kutsche (di winer kareta). Novellen (1935)
3. Medrisch Pinchas (1936)
4. Schmetterlinge (schmeterlingen, 1938)
5. Die Wurzel (der worzl, 1949)
6. Jephtes Tochter. Dramen (1947)