Jewish Writers in Rumania Attacked for Lacking “consistency of Principles”

The charge that Yiddish writers in the country do not reflect closely enough the changes which Rumania’s Jewish population has undergone since the end of the war was made here in the current issue of “Contemporanul,” Rumania’s leading literary Journal.

The charge, contained in an article signed by I. Faerstein, notes that at the recent congress of writers in this city, the Yiddish writers pledged to “create literary works in the service of the people, fight without mercy against any nationalist tendency, endeavor to root out all mystical and bigoted tendencies and contribute by their works to the up building of Socialism.”

Strongly criticizing contemporary Yiddish writers for lacking “consistency of principles” and “precise ideological position,” the article takes issue particularly with two poems written by Jacob Gropper, president of the Yiddish department of the Union of Writers of the Rumanian Popular Republic, In one of these poems–“Sabbath of Consolation”–Gropper depicts the sufferings of the Jews.

Faerstein writes that Gropper is “blinded by his pain…he does not see the democratic fighters, the non-Jewish partisans who fraternize with the suffering Jews” Gropper’s other poem–“End of a Calendar, and a Beginning”–which deals with the proclamation of the Rumanian Republic, is criticized for failing to describe the “new attitude of the Jewish masses who had been tortured in the past.”

Several poems by a new poet, Simale Snaider, are criticized by Faerstein, who says that the poet’s talent “will find Just expression only simultaneously with the poet’s acquiring a precise ideological position.” A novel by Wolf Tambur Springtime Without Sun,” is criticized because the heroine, “although a Communist, does not show the typical qualities of a member of the party.”