Joachim Neugroschel, Prolific Multilingual Translator, Is Dead at 73
The prolific literary translator Joachim Neugroschel died on May 23 in Brooklyn, N.Y. He was 73. Neugroschel translated more than 200 books from Yiddish, French, German, Russia and Italian, including the work of Nobel Prize-winner Elias Canetti. His legal guardian and former partner, Aaron Mack Schloff, confirmed Neugroschel’s death.
The son of the Yiddish Galician poet Mendel Neugroschel, Joachim Neugroschel took a particular interest in translating from Yiddish. He was born in Vienna on January 13, 1938, and immigrated to Rio de Janeiro in 1939. His family arrived in New York City in 1941.
Neugroschel graduated from Columbia University in 1958. His Yiddish anthologies, “The Shtetl” and “Yene Velt,” reached a wide audience, and his translations of S. Ansky’s play “The Dybbuk” and Sholem Asch‘s drama “God of Vengeance” were produced. Neugroschel was also a critic and poet, and founded and edited, along with Suzanne Ostro Zavrian, the poetry journal Extensions, which was published from 1970 to 1975.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
