Malka Lee
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Malka Lee (July 4, 1904 – March 22, 1976) was an American poet. She is the author of Durkh Kindershe Oygn (Through the Eyes of Childhood), published in 1955 and dedicated to her family, who were killed by the Nazis in the shtetl of Monastrikh in 1941, as well as six volumes of poetry in Yiddish, her mother tongue, much of it about her experience of observing the Holocaust from the safety of the United States.
Contents |
[edit] Personal life
Lee was born into a Hasidic family in Monastrikh, Galicia. With her parents Frieda Duhl and Chaim Leopold, she fled to Vienna during World War I, and after returning to Poland after the war, she emigrated to New York in 1921, where she attended Hunter College and the Jewish Teachers Seminary.
She married writer Aaron Rappaport, with whom she had two children, Joseph and Yvette. After Rappaport's death, she married Moshe Besser in 1966.
[edit] Poetry
Her first published poem appeared in 1922, and she continued to write until her death in 1976. Her poetry between 1945 and 1950 is about the pain of watching from a distance as her childhood home and family were destroyed during the Holocaust. Later poems expressed her love of Israel and America, and her devotion to Zionism.
[edit] Works
- Durkh Kindershe Oygn (1955)
- Durkh Loytere Kvaln (1950)
- Gezangen (1940)
- In Lukht fun Doyres (1961)
- Kines fun Undzer Tsayt (1945)
- Lider (1932)
- Mayselekh far Yoselen (1969)
- Untern Nusnboym (1969)
[edit] References
- Hyman, Paula E. & Dash Moore, Deborah. Jewish Women in America, Vol I. Routledge, 1977. ISBN 0-415-91934-7
