Joachim Neugroschel, Prolific Multilingual Translator, Is Dead at 73
The prolific literary translator Joachim Neugroschel died on May 23 in Brooklyn, N.Y. He was 73. Neugroschel translated more than 200 books from Yiddish, French, German, Russia and Italian, including the work of Nobel Prize-winner Elias Canetti. His legal guardian and former partner, Aaron Mack Schloff, confirmed Neugroschel’s death.
The son of the Yiddish Galician poet Mendel Neugroschel, Joachim Neugroschel took a particular interest in translating from Yiddish. He was born in Vienna on January 13, 1938, and immigrated to Rio de Janeiro in 1939. His family arrived in New York City in 1941.
Neugroschel graduated from Columbia University in 1958. His Yiddish anthologies, “The Shtetl” and “Yene Velt,” reached a wide audience, and his translations of S. Ansky’s play “The Dybbuk” and Sholem Asch‘s drama “God of Vengeance” were produced. Neugroschel was also a critic and poet, and founded and edited, along with Suzanne Ostro Zavrian, the poetry journal Extensions, which was published from 1970 to 1975.
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