Leyb Kvitko

Leyb Kvitko (also Lejb Kvitko; probably born between 1890 and 1895 in a village near Odesa, died in Moscow in 1952) was a Jewish writer who wrote primarily in Yiddish. He published his first texts as a teenager and became particularly known in the Soviet Union as a poet for children. Orphaned at an early age, he worked at various times as a tailor, dyer, shoemaker, porter, and ship loader. During the Second World War, he spent time in evacuation in Alma-Ata. On August 12, 1952, following a secret trial, Kvitko was executed along with numerous Jewish intellectuals in what became known as the “Night of the Murdered Poets.”