Alter-Sholem Kacyzne (1885–1941)

Alter-Sholem Kacyzne was born to a working-class Jewish family in Vilnius (Vilna), Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire. He attended Hebrew and Russian-language Jewish schools, but the family spoke Yiddish at home. He was an avid reader of literature in many languages, including Polish, German, and French, even after he had to leave school at age 14 after his father died. He became an apprentice photographer at his uncle's studio in Ekaterinoslav (present day Dnipro, Ukraine), where he first published two short stories in the periodical Evreiski mir (Jewish World). During this time, he married Khana Khachnov. In 1910, he moved to Warsaw to join the literary circle around I.L. Peretz, who became his literary mentor. Kacyzne opened his own photography studio and contributed articles, stories, novellas, ballads, and poems to a series of periodicals. A collection of these appeared in book form in 1922 as Arabeskn (Arabesques).

He also wrote plays, including Dukus (Duke), produced in Warsaw in 1925, which was a great success and was performed throughout Poland, Romania, and as far away as Argentina. In 1921, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society commissioned him to photograph the misery of Polish Jews who were hoping to immigrate to the USA. Soon after, he began to contribute photos on a regular basis to the Jewish Daily Forward (Forverts), published in New York. With a commission from the Forward, he traveled and took photos through Poland, the British Mandate of Palestine, Romania, Italy, Spain, and Morocco, documenting the lives of Jews.

In 1929-1930, he published his two-volume novel Shtarke un shvakhe (The Strong and the Weak); other major works included Baladn un groteskn (Ballads and Grotesques, 1936). Kacyzne also translated works from Russian to Yiddish and wrote the screenplay for the now-classic film Der dibek (The Dybbuk, 1937). After the outbreak of World War II, Kacyzne left Warsaw with his wife and daughter for the Soviet-occupied city of Lwów (Lviv), where he participated in theater and radio programs. In 1941, fleeing before the advancing German army, he arrived in Tarnopol (present-day Ternopil), in western Ukraine, where he was killed in a Ukrainian pogrom, along with thousands of other Jews. Today he is remembered as one of the most significant contributors to Jewish Polish cultural life in the first half of the 20th century.