People
The manuscript Shulamit Shalit preserved
Olzhas Suleimenov in the recollections of an acquaintance from the Literary Institute.
Published
This is a translation. The original is Русский. Language review: not performed by a native speaker.
In December 1960, Olzhas Suleimenov brought Shulamit Shalit, an acquaintance from the Literary Institute, a handwritten collection. It was a large account book filled with poems. On the cover, he wrote his name and the note “Interlinear translation from Kazakh”. Shalit recalled that the poet gave her the book before leaving Moscow.
A few weeks earlier, Shalit and Suleimenov had attended an evening in memory of the poet Peretz Markish at the Central House of Writers. According to her, the poet’s son David brought the two tickets. Poems were read in Yiddish and Russian. In the manuscript she later received, Shalit read “Jewish Songs” and connected them with that evening.
During a trip to Lithuania in 1964, Suleimenov visited Paneriai, the site of mass killings of Jews near Vilnius. Shalit wrote that afterwards he asked for a translation of a song with lyrics by Hirsh Glick. Her relative Rukhoma Khaitene sang the song.
Shalit was unable to take the manuscript with her when she moved to Israel. She recalled that the book only returned to her during perestroika. She described these episodes in an article published in June 2006.