Considered the “Jewish Byron” by many, Peretz Markish (1895-1852) was born in Volhynia, Ukraine, and went on to write forty works in Yiddish, twenty of which were translated into Russian. In 1921, in Warsaw, he formed the group called The Gang, which struggled against realism in literature, and he co-edited the expressionist Khaliastre Almanakh, which contained illustrations by Marc Chagall. His own poems expressed Jewish sorrow and hope. In 1926 he returned to the Soviet Union where he produced his best-known works, including those expressing Soviet patriotism and his grief at the extermination of the Jews. He was awarded the Order of Lenin in 1939, and executed in 1952, accused of Jewish nationalism.
