Beyle Schaechter Gottesman (1920–2013)

Beyle (Bella) Schaechter-Gottesman was born to a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria. Her parents were Lifshe and Binyumen Schaechter, and her younger brother was the Yiddish linguist Mordkhe Schaechter. Lifshe Schaechter was reknowned for her folk singing. The family moved to Czernowitz, Romania (present-day Chernivtsi, Ukraine) when Beyle was a young child. She was brought up in a multi-lingual household that included Yiddish, German, Romanian, and Ukrainian; she also studied French and Latin at school. Beyle went back to Vienna for art lessons, but was forced to return to Czernowitz when Nazi Germany invaded Austria in 1938. In 1941, she married Jonas Gottesman, a physician, and together they survived World War II in the Czernowitz Ghetto, along with her mother and brother. In 1951, the Gottesmans emigrated with their young daughter to the USA, where they had two more children. Settling in New York City, the family took part in an experimental Yiddish community in the Bronx, centered on Bainbridge Avenue. There a half-dozen Yiddish-speaking families bought adjacent houses and reinvigorated the existing Sholem Aleichem Yiddish School. Schaechter-Gottesman wrote classroom materials, plays, and songs for the school and edited a magazine for children, Kinderzhurnal, and a magazine of children's writings, Enge-benge. Her first book of poetry, Mir Forn (We’re Traveling) was published in 1963. She wrote another seven books, including poetry for adults, children's books, and song books. She recorded three CDs of her songs and one recording of folk songs; many of them have been performed by Theodore Bikel and others. A documentary film called Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman: Song of Autumn, was released in 2007.