Khalyasṭre

Yitskhok Broyner, 1887–1944 (Artist)

Peretz Markish, 1895–1952 (Editor and author); Ozer Warszawski, 1894–1944 (Editor and author)

Khalyasṭre (Gang)

Warsaw, 1922, volume 1

In the 1920s the major European cultural and publishing centers of Warsaw, Berlin, and Paris were safe havens for Jewish intellectuals, artists, and writers who sought refuge from war, revolutions, civil unrest, pogroms, famine, and anti-Semitism. These cities offered a freedom of thought, cosmopolitanism, political liberalism, relative stability, and most important, exposure to the broader avant-garde movements that would nurture and inspire their distinct perspectives. The newly formed artistic establishments and their publications—experimental platforms for interconnections between literature and visual art—thrived in the cities. Although often short-lived, they played a remarkable role in shaping the cultural landscape of the 20th century. 

The futuristic literary group Khalyasṭre (Gang), which brought together its founding members and promising Yiddish authors like Peretz Markish, Uri Zvi Greenberg (1896–1981), and Melekh Ravitch (1893–1976), was established in 1919 in Warsaw, a vibrant hub of the Yiddish secular culture in Poland. Two volumes of the magazine were published, in 1922 and 1924. The first volume, serving as a manifesto, appeared in Warsaw under the editorship of Markish and Israel Joshua Singer, and featured works of 15 Yiddish writers. The front cover, presented here, featured an illustration by the modernist Yitskhok (Vincent) Broyner, who studied painting and art in Lodz and Berlin. 

The illustration depicts a stanza in Yiddish by the poet Moshe Broderzon (1890–1956) that served as the magazine’s motto. Figures of athletic young men in synchronous march to Broderzon’s chillingly prescient lines cited beneath the drawing prefigure what was to come: “We, young, we—a joyful singing company—we are striding an unknown path, in deeply melancholic days, in nights of horror, Per aspera ad astra (Through hardships to the stars).”