GERSHON GOROKHOV

GERSHON GOROKHOV (d. 1937)

            He was a Soviet Jewish pedagogue and school leader, especially active in Ukraine in the 1920s and first half of the 1930s. He edited the monthly magazine Oktyaberl (Little October), “for little Octoberites,” in Kiev (1932), and he was one of the leaders of the pedagogical section of the Kiev Institute for Jewish Culture at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. He translated into Yiddish a number of textbooks for Jewish schools, such as: Al. Astriab’s Eksperimentale geometrye (Experimental geometry) (Kiev: Ukrainian State Publishers, 1926), 290 pp. In late 1934 when the director of the Institute, Yoysef Liberberg, became chair of the executive committee of the Jewish Autonomous Region and left for Birobidzhan, Gorokhov assumed his post. His role in this post did not last long. When in 1936 the security organs in Moscow and Kiev turned to looking for former “Trotskyists,” all in the same night the leaders of the Kiev Institute—Max Erik, Mikhl Levitan, and Yoyne Khinshtin were all arrested; along with them, the director was also arrested. According to available information, Gorokhov’s life was cut short in 1937.

            He wrote for the anthology Di lernarbet in shul (School work), edited by Yankev Reznik (Kharkov-Kiev: State Publishers for National Minorities, 1933), 210 pp.  He was the author of pamphlets and books, among them: Di ibergreytung fun der lerershaft (The preparedness of the faculty) (Kharkov, 1930), 22 pp.; Di politekhnishe shul loyt marks-engels-lenin (The polytechnic school according to Marx, Engels, and Lenin), with Yankev Reznik (Kharkov-Kiev: State Publishers for National Minorities, 1932), 196 pp.; Vos iz azoyns an arbet-tsimer (Just what is a work room) (Kharkov-Kiev, 1932), 31 pp.; Lenin vegn frages fun pedagogik un shulboyung (Lenin on questions about pedagogy and school building) (Kiev: Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, 1934), 55 pp. 

Source: E. Shulman, in Fraye arbeter shtime (New York) (July 18, 1952).

[Additional information from: Chaim Beider, Leksikon fun yidishe shrayber in ratn-farband (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers in the Soviet Union), ed. Boris Sandler and Gennady Estraikh (New York: Congress for Jewish Culture, Inc., 2011), p. 72.]