Leṿ Berinsḳi

He was born into a Jewish family from Bessarabia; his father, Shmuel, was a tailor. During World War II, he was taken to Tajikistan and to Zlatoust, in the Urals. Upon his return to Moldova, he met intellectuals such as Valeriu Gagiu, Alexander Gelman or Alexander Brodsky. From 1954, he lived in Stalino (Donetsk), and after training (1957-1959) at the Stalin Technical School as a cultural employee, he worked as an accordionist and a music teacher. He joined a group of local poets, was a close friend of the Ukrainian poet Vasyl Stus and published in the newspaper Komsomolets Donbassa. Berinsky lived and worked in Moldova in 1960-1961. Afterwards, he returned to Donetsk. From 1963 to 1968 he studied at the Smolensk Pedagogical Institute and translation at the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute. From 1970 to 1974 he taught German at the Moscow Trade Union Technical Institute. He has lived in Israel since 1991.