Josef Burg, Yiddish Author, Is Dead at 97
The award-winning Yiddish author Josef Burg has died at the age of 97 in Chernivtsi, Ukraine.
Burg died Monday of a stroke, according to Austria’s Theodor Kramer Society, which presented Burg with a literary award earlier this year.
Before World War I Chernivtsi, known as Czernowitz in German and Yiddish, was the capital of the Bucovina region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and a focal point of Yiddish language and literature. The region came under Romanian rule after World War I.
Born in 1912 in the nearby town of Vishnits, Burg lost his entire family in the Holocaust. He survived by fleeing to the Soviet Union. He published his first story in 1934 in the Yiddish newspaper Chernovitser Bleter. Romanian authorities banned the newspaper in 1938, but Burg revived it as a monthly in 1990.
He continued writing and publishing well into his 90s, receiving several awards such as Israel’s Segal Prize for Yiddish writing.
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
