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"Dybbuk" (fragment)
Art of Melita Kraus

 
Most of Melita’s family perished in the Holocaust. She began to exhibit her work in 1991, when her family was once again destroyed by war, this time in ex-Yugoslavia. To survive reality, she created another world for herself where the story of her family could continue. Her paintings represent chapters of the story of her life. The painting that describes it best is ‘The Dybbuk” inspired by the play “Between the Two Worlds” by S. Ansky, which tells a story of fated love. Dybbuk, a wandering soul of a dead person who could enter and  possess the body of a living person, was a popular figure in Jewish folklore in Central and Eastern Europe.

About the Author:

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Melita Kraus
Bjelovar, Croatia

Melita Kraus was born in a non-observant Jewish family in Croatia in 1954. Most of her family perished in the Holocaust. While she was growing up, her family didn’t practice any Jewish rituals, nor was there any talk about them. Today, she uses her art as a way of honoring her family and all the victims of the Holocaust.

Melita Kraus Мелита Краус
Bookshelf
by Ilya Perelmuter (editor)

Launched in 2012, “Four Centuries” is an international electronic magazine of Russian poetry in translation.

by Ilya Ehrenburg

Ilya Ehrenburg (1891–1967) was one of the most prolific Russian writers of the twentieth century.  Babi Yar and Other Poems, translated by Anna Krushelnitskaya, is a representative selection of Ehrenburg’s poetry, available in English for the first time.

by William Conelly

Young readers will love this delightful work of children’s verse by poet William Conelly, accompanied by Nadia Kossman’s imaginative, evocative illustrations.

by Maria Galina

A book of poems by Maria Galina, put together and completed exactly one day before the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This is Galina’s seventh book of poems. With translations by Anna Halberstadt and Ainsley Morse.

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by Aleksandr Kabanov

The first bilingual (Russian-English) collection of poems by Aleksandr Kabanov, one of Ukraine’s major poets, “Elements for God” includes poems that predicted – and now chronicle – Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.

by Yulia Fridman

A book of poems by Yulia Fridman.

“I have been reading Yulia Fridman’s poems for a long time and have admired them for a long time.” (Vladimir Bogomyakov, poet)

Videos
Three Questions. A Documentary by Vita Shtivelman
Play Video
Poetry Reading in Honor of Brodsky’s 81st Birthday
Length: 1:35:40