Hinde Bergner

Hinde Bergner (10 October 1870 – 1942) was a Yiddish-language writer from Galicia.

Biography She was born October 10, 1870, in Radymno, Galicia (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), one of six children of Joseph and Bluma Rosenblatt. Her father owned a local granary, and Hinde was expected to help with the accounting of the family business growing up. She grew up in a Hasidic family, though her father was somewhat open to modern and secular innovations, paying for Hinde to learn Polish, German, and secular subjects. As a young girl, Hinde ran away to Jaroslaw to stay with an aunt when she thought her parents would forbid her from continuing her education.

Writing Hinde began writing a family memoir in 1937, which she mailed to her sons in installments. Her last correspondence was in 1941. Her memoir, In di lange vinternekht, mishpokhe-zikhroynes fun a shtetl in galitsye, 1870-1900 (In the long winter nights, family memoirs from a town in Galicia, 1870-1900) describes the experience of modernization and secularization, and the tensions that followed, in her childhood shtetl. It is significant for its female perspective on cultural change and modernization within the Jewish community. It was published posthumously in 1946, with a foreword by her sons. The book was later translated from Yiddish by Justin Cammy. A Hebrew translation by Arye Aharoni, titled Belelot haḥoref haarukim, zikhronot mishpaḥa meayara begalitsya, was published in 1982. Otto Müller published a German translation in 1995. An English translation, with an introduction by Justin Cammy, was published by Harvard University Press in 2005.