Simon Horontchik

Simon Horontchik (Yiddish: שמעון האָראָנטשיק‎; 13 June 1889 – September 1939) was a Yiddish novelist and short story writer.

Simon Horontchik
Portrait of Horontchik by Gela Seksztajn
Native name	שמעון האָראָנטשיק
Born	(1889-06-13)13 June 1889 Vyelun, Kalisz Governorate, Poland
Died	September 1939 (1939-10) (aged 50) Kalushin, Poland
Language	Yiddish

Horontchik was born into a poor Hasidic family in Vyelun. He worked as a labourer at a lacework factory in Kalisz from the age of 17 until the outbreak of the First World War,[1] during which time he began composing poetry. He narrowly escaped the destruction of Kalisz in August 1914, fleeing to Lodz and then Sompolno. There he became a grocer and married.

His first publication was a short story in the Yiddish daily Lodzer tageblatt in 1916. He published poetry in numerous publications until 1921, when he published his first book, Feldblumen ('Flowers of the Field'; Warsaw, 1921), thereafter devoting himself primarily to prose writing.[2]

He lived for several years in Vlatslavek, Paris, Berlin, and Warsaw.[2][3] He fled toward Vilna upon the Nazi occupation of Warsaw in September 1939, but ran into German troops engaged in a pogrom in Kalushin. He committed suicide to avoid a violent death.[4][5]