Yosef Burg was born in Vizhniza in 1912, and moved to Chernivtsi with his family at the age of twelve. He studied in a Yiddish school and then at a teachers’ college, during which time he started publishing Yiddish stories. In 1935, he moved to Vienna to study, where he remained until Austria’s annexation to Germany, when he returned to Chernivtsi. He survived the war in evacuation in Central Asia and later was drafted into the Red Army and forced labor. In 1958, after working as a teacher for several years in Russia, Burg returned to Chernivtsi and began writing Yiddish poetry and stories again. He continued to write in Yiddish for the rest of his life, and was recognized as one of the leading Yiddish writers of his generation. He was awarded the Segal Prize for Yiddish writing in 1992 and Austria’s Theodor Kramer Prize in 2009.
Khumesh (Pentateuch) in Yiddish
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