curriculum vitae

1990

kval: Reyzl Zhikhlinski zaytl

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Born in Gombin (Gabin) Poland, daughter of Mordechai and Debora Appel; sister Chana, brothers Jankew, David. My brother Abram lives in Paris. Attended a Polish public school from 1916–1923. Because there was no high school in the small town of Gombin, I and another student had a private teacher from 1924 to 1927 after finishing public school. My father was a leather worker. He went three times to the United States. His family stayed in Poland. He died in Chicago in 1928.

Literary debut in the «Folkszeitung» in 1927 or 1928, a daily Jewish newspaper in Warsaw. Melech Rawitsch had there one column each week, under the name «letters to one and to all». Yiddish beginners sent there their poems – and Rawitsch answered – to continue to write or to «break all the pens in the house». I also sent a few poems and his answer in that paper was encouraging.

He was not the editor. I don't know the name of the editor. I directed an orphanage one year, from 1934–1935. I didn't have a special education for the job, but the president of the orphanage in Wloclawek read some of my poems in some magazines – and offered a job.

My first book of poems «Lieder» was published by the P.E.N. in Warsaw (The Yiddish Pen Club) in 1936. Introduction by Itzik Manger. I was not a teacher in Warsaw, I worked as a clerk in a bank, until the outbreak of the war in 1939.

About six weeks after the German's army's invasion of the city, I was asked by S. Lastik, if I want to leave Warsaw with him, and two other people in a taxi. The taxi would take us to the river Bug, which has been at this time the border between Poland and Russia. The prize for a place in the taxi was 400 Polish zloties, which was like today 400 dollars. I agreed to it, and was left almost with nothing.

The next day we left Warsaw and the taxi brought us to the river. A man with a boat took us across the river, to the other side – and there were Russian soldiers. That was not far from Bialystok. And so I escaped from the gas chambers.

I lived in Kazan – my son, Marek Kanter was born there, on February 15, 1943. He is teaching mathematics, including one year in the University of Tel-Aviv. My husband, Isaac Kanter, was a doctor, a psychiatrist, and worked in Russia in a hospital. He died this year, 1990, in Brooklyn.

After I graduated from high school in New York, I studied English literature and biology at City College. My name as a student was Rajzel Kanter. In the New School for Social Research, I studied literature and philosophy.