Shtetl

Sofia Dubnova-Erlich

1943

The shtetl, lost here among Polish fields and groves, might be called Turek or Przasnysz, Konin or Maków, yet what one remembers is not the name but the old marketplace reeking of tar and dung where a rickety, mud-splattered bus would laboriously grind to a stop. What has stayed in my memory is an old town hall with a blackened clock face, a movie…

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Creator Bio

Sofia Dubnova-Erlich

1885–1986

Poet and political activist Sofia Dubnova-Erlich was born in Mstislavl, Belorussia, the eldest daughter of historian Simon Dubnow. She studied at St. Petersburg University and the Sorbonne. After she married Henryk Erlich, a leader of the Bund in Poland, the political situation drove Dubnova-Erlich and her husband to move to Warsaw in 1918. During World War II, Henryk was arrested and murdered by the Soviet authorities, and Dubnova-Erlich settled in Vilna until 1941, after which she escaped to the United States, where she learned of her husband’s death and her father’s murder in the Holocaust. She continued to advocate for civil rights, contributing essays and translations to the Russian- and Yiddish-language press.

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