In the Odessa Regional Universal Scientific Library. M. S. Grushevsky witnessed the opening of Pavel Kozlenko’s exhibition “The Black Sea spared you... Selections from the history of Jewish masters, words from a place on the birch of the Black Sea.”
The exhibition tells about life and creativity prominent Jewish poets, writers, and intellectuals who lived and worked in Odessa from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century. Among them are Chaim Bialik, Mark Varshavsky, Matviy Hartsman, Gritsko Kernerenko, Kadya Molodovsky, Semyon Frug and others. At that time, the place on the birch of the Black Sea was one of the largest Jewish literary centers. The lives and creativity of a whole galaxy of poets and writers, who wrote in Hebrew, Yiddish, Ukrainian and Russian, are connected with Odessa. Their life stories, full of tragedy, courage and intensity, reflect the richness of Jewish culture and its contributions to the Ukrainian and secular literary decline.
The author of the exhibition is Pavlo Kozlenko - having tried to capture the power of words from the publication of Odessa’s subvirs, masterpieces of the words of poets known and perhaps forgotten were written from the pen and on other machines.
For the author it was unimportant if a person was born, lived in Odessa for many years and wrote in my own way. The idea was something else: to show the richness of Jewish culture and its contributions to the Ukrainian and secular literary decline. And, judging by the final result, Pavlo completely fulfilled his assignments.
Most of the Jewish Odessa poets represented at the exhibition suffered in other ways. Acts from them were repressed and died - Perets Markish, Benedikt Livshits and Ivan Kulik. The deyaks passed through Stalin's camps, with the help of Josip Kerler. Dekhto perished in the hour of the Holocaust.
This project of calls is to turn their names and those miraculous rows that are buried in the atmosphere, stormy from the sights and fortunes, associated with the place on the birch of the Black Sea.
