Dovid Knut
Dovid Knut | |
---|---|
Born | September 10, 1900 |
Died | |
Nationality | French |
Dovid Knut or Knout (Russian: До́вид Кнут) (23 September [O.S. 10 September] 1900–15 February 1955), real name Duvid Meerovich (later David Mironovich) Fiksman (Russian: Ду́вид Ме́ерович [Дави́д Миро́нович] Фи́ксман), was a Jewish poet and member of the French Resistance.
Biography
Fiksman was born in the Bessarabian town of Orgeev in the Russian Empire (now Orhei, Moldova), the eldest son of the grocer Meer Fiksman and his wife Haya. His early years were spent in Chișinău, where his parents had moved by early 1903. There he studied in a cheder and a state school for Jews. At fourteen he began publishing poetry in local periodicals, and in 1918 he edited the magazine Molodaya mysl' [Young thought], taking the pen name Dovid Knut, perhaps from the word knut, meaning 'whip, lash', used in both Russian and Yiddish as a symbol of oppression and slavery.[1]
In 1920, when
In the early 1930s, Knut separated from his first wife, Sarra Groboys, the mother of his son Daniel, and became close to Ariadna (Ariane) Scriabine (1906–1944, known as "Régine" in the Resistance), the daughter of the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin. At the same time he was becoming increasingly involved with Jewish activism, and he and Ariadna visited Palestine from August to December 1937; while he was there, Haaretz published one of his poems in Hebrew translation.[3] He edited the Jewish newspaper L'Affirmation from January 1938 to September 1939, attacking writers and intellectuals who showed sympathy for anti-Semitism. In September 1939 he was mobilized into the French army. Ariadna had become passionately devoted to the Jewish cause; they were married in March 1940 and she converted to Judaism at that time.[4] The next month they moved to Toulouse, where along with others they established a secret organization called La main forte [The strong hand], which became the Armée juive (AJ or Jewish Army), a World War II resistance movement. In December 1942, pursued by the Gestapo, Knut escaped to Switzerland; Ariadna gave birth to his son Yosi in May 1943. She was ambushed and killed by members of the French Militia while holding an AJ meeting at her flat in Toulouse in July 1944, two weeks before the city was liberated.
Knut returned to Paris in the fall of 1944, working at the
Notes
- ISBN 076560521X), p. 446.
- ^ Shrayer, Anthology of Jewish-Russian Literature, pp. 446–47.
- ^ Shrayer, Anthology of Jewish-Russian Literature, p. 447.
- ^ Ne les oublions pas: SCRIABINE épouse FIKSMAN Ariane Archived 2014-08-19 at the Wayback Machine.
Poetry collections
- Moikh tysyachiletii [My millennia]. Paris: Ptitselov, 1925 (text; pdf).
- Vtoraya kniga stikhov [Second book of poems]. Paris: Navarre, 1928 (text; pdf).
- Satir [Satyr]. Paris: Monastyr' muz, 1929.
- Parizhskie nochi [Paris nights]. Paris: Rodnik, 1932.
- Nasushchnaya lyubov' [Urgent love]. Paris: Dom knigi, 1938.
- Izbrannye stikhi [Selected poems]. Paris: Moderne de la Presse, 1949.
References
- Dovid Knout, Contribution à l’histoire de la Résistance juive en France, 1940–1944. Paris: Éditions du Centre, 1944.
- Yehuda Ben-David, Yaʻel Zaidman, Abraham Polonski and the Jewish resistance in France during the Second World War. Miśrad ha-bitaḥon, 2002.
- Raphaël Delpard, L'armée juive clandestine en France: 1940–1945. Page après page, 2002.
- Renée Poznanski, Jews in France during World War II. UPNE, 2001.
- Adam Rayski et al., Les Juifs dans la résistance et la libération: histoire, témoignages, débats. Editions du Scribe, 1985.
- Marie Syrkin, Blessed is the Match: The Story of Jewish Resistance. Jewish Publication Society of America, 1976.