In Opposite Directions

The Yiddish poet and short-story writer Hirsh Bloshtein was the son of a poor tailor in Kedainiai, Lithuania, but broke with traditional Judaism and embraced secularism and socialism. He taught in Jewish schools in Lithuania and Ukraine and in 1925 immigrated to Argentina. There he worked in left-wing Jewish schools, wrote for the communist press, and edited the radical literary monthly Naye velt. In 1931 he was arrested for his communist activity and deported to the Soviet Union. He survived the Holocaust in Kazakhstan and, unusually for Soviet literary figures, died a natural death.