The Rokhl Brokhes Project

FAIN: RQ-300020-24

Vanderbilt University (Nashville, TN 37203-2416)
Allison Schachter (Project Director: November 2023 to present)

Preparation for print publication of twenty stories in English translation by Rokhl Brokhes (ca. 1899-1945), a modern Yiddish woman writer who was murdered by the Nazis. (24 months)

This project aims to translate and disseminate the work of Rokhl Brokhes, one of the earliest modern Yiddish women writers. Brokhes’s stories document Jewish women’s experiences across five decades of civil war, world war, and revolution in Russia and later the Soviet Union. On the eve of the Nazi invasion of Minsk in 1941, an 8-volume collection of her more than 200 stories, novellas, and plays was scheduled for publication. Brokhes was murdered by the Nazis and plans for her collected works abandoned. Nazi violence towards Jews resulted in a transformation of the canon of Yiddish literature and led to the erasure of women writers from its history. Translating her work not only recovers a major woman writer, but also reshapes our understanding of Russian, Soviet, and Jewish cultural history of the period. We request funding to restore her legacy through the publication of a translation of her short fiction, with a scholarly introduction and annotations.