(Jewish Telegraphic Agency)
The tenth anniversary of the death of Sholom Aleichem, the Jewish Mark Twain, was commemorated yesterday in Perioslav.
Sholom Aleichem, who was born in Perioslav on February 18, 1959, died in New York on May 13, 1916. It has been decided by the people of Perioslav to convert the house in which Sholom Aleichem was born 67 years ago, and which is still preserved as at the time of his birth, into a library and reading room to be known as the Sholom Aleichem department, to arrange for the local general library a special Sholom Aleichem department, to arrange for the local Yiddish school and one of the streets in the town to be renamed after Sholom Aleichem, to organize a series of reading and lectures among the local masses and the youth on Sholom Aleichem’s life and works and to distribute among the poorer population free popular editions of Sholom Aleichem’s works.
Although Sholom Aleichem lived in Perioslav until he was 19 years of age, the town has no Sholom Aleichem relics. The letters which he wrote from Nervi to his friends in Perioslav were destroyed by bandits during the civil war.
Throughout the Soviet Union, especially in Odessa, Kiev, Minsk, and Moscow, similar ceremonies were held.
Special memorial meetings were held in all the educational institutions throughout the Ukraine by order of the Ukrainian Ministry of Education and Fine Arts.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
