Helene Khatskels — Association of Jews of Vilna and vicinity in Israel

Helene Khatskels (1882-1973) was a Yiddish writer, translator and educator, who was born in Kovno (then part of the Russian Empire). She had an enlightened education, graduating from a girls' high school. She went to St. Petersburg to complete her education and while there, she joined the Bund. She was loyal to the ideals of the Bund her whole life. Using her underground moniker, Rachel, she became a mobile activist for the movement and travelled from city to city recruiting youngsters to the ranks of the revolutionary movement.

In 1905 Khatskels moved from Kovno to Vilna after she had been imprisoned for her work in the movement. In Vilna she set up a chain of elementary schools where she also taught and was principal of a girls' high school. During the decade from 1920-1930 she gained a reputation as a first-class educator, educating in the spirit of the revolution; she also helped edit a Yiddish pedagogical journal in the spirit of the Bund and the Soviet regime. Her work as a teacher, counselor and principal of a Jewish teachers' seminar in Vilna was dedicated to the attempt to become integrated into the world of the Russian Revolution.

Khatskels traveled to a number of European cities at the beginning of the 1940's. During the course of her travels she also went to Israel where she clashed with the Zionist educators. She escaped with her family to central Asia when the Nazis invaded Poland and the pact between the Nazis and the Russians came into effect. After the Soviet victory in 1945, she returned to Vilna and devoted herself to the rehabilitation of the remnants of Jewish education in Vilna and Lithuania. She set up dormitories for Jewish children whose parents had been exterminated in the Holocaust. In 1947 she was awarded the prestigious Soviet award "The Order of Lenin". She left her mark on the education of Jewish children in the U.S.S.R. and was one of the founders of the Yiddish school system that was totally committed to the regime.

She published about twenty books in Yiddish: stories, textbooks and translations of European writers. She also translated French and American writers into Yiddish. None of her books have been translated into Hebrew.

She died in Kovno at the age of 91.

Translated from: Wikipedia