ALEKSANDER OVEDOV

ALEKSANDER OVEDOV (1888-September 1953)

Born in Yekaterinoslav, Ukraine.  He studied in religious school, and later in a Russian high school.  In his youth he joined the revolutionary movement and was a close sympathizer of the Russian Socialist Revolutionaries.  He immigrated to North America (the United States) in 1910 and from there in 1913 to South Africa where he settled in Johannesburg.  There he contributed to Jewish social institutions.  He wrote articles and essays on social and literary themes in Yiddish, Russian, and English.  For many years, he edited the English-Yiddish magazine Ivri-anokhi (I’m a Jew) and for a short time S. A. Jewish Times.  In 1918 he was the chairman of the Jewish Literary Union in Johannesburg.

Sources: Obituary in Afrikaner yidishe tsaytung (September 18, 1953); M. Shur, in Dorem-afrika (Johannesburg, October 1953).