Yenta Mash

Yenta Mash was born in 1922 and grew up in Zguritse, a small town in the region once known as Bessarabia. In 1941, she and her parents were exiled to a Siberian labor camp, from which she escaped in 1948. She then spent a number of years working as a bookkeeper in Kishinev. In 1977, in her fifties, Mash immigrated to Israel and settled in Haifa, where she began to write and to publish. Her short stories were published in Yiddish journals on both sides of the Atlantic, and her work was collected in four volumes published in Israel. She was honored with Israel’s Itsik Manger Prize in 1999 and with the Dovid Hofshteyn Prize in 2002. Her last book was published in 2007; she died in 2013.