LUDO, ISAC IACOVITZ

LUDO, ISAC IACOVITZ (1894–?), Romanian author, journalist, and translator. Ludo began his literary career in his native Jassy, but soon moved to Bucharest, where he contributed to the Jewish review Lumea evree and to leading Romanian periodicals. When the Jewish daily Mântuirea was founded in Bucharest in 1919, Ludo joined the staff and became one of its chief contributors. He also directed the Zionist daily Şitri and the periodical Palestina ilustratǎ, later editing the Jewish weekly Adam. A prominent figure in Romanian Jewish life, Ludo played a leading part in the fight against antisemitism, and in all his writings bitterly attacked both Jewish assimilationists and opponents of the Jews. He spent the two years before World War ii in France.

Most of Ludo's works are concerned with Jewish problems. Doi mari poeţi – Heinrich Heine ş A.C. Cuza ("Two Great Poets – Heinrich Heine and A.C. Cuza," 1934), first published in Adam, mordantly satirizes the Romanian antisemitic leader Cuza, who fancied himself as a poet and claimed that the Jews were incapable of artistic creativity. In Jurul unei obsesii ("Around an Obsession," 1936), a lengthy analysis of Cuza's and the Nazis' anti-Jewish claims, he dealt incidentally with the scurrilous portrayal of Romanian Jews in Ionel Teodoreanu's popular novel La Medeleni (1926). Ludo also wrote several more books against the Nazis and Fascists, such as Hitler salveazǎ echilibrul istoric ("Hitler Preserves the Balance of History"), Nae lonescu apǎrǎ pe Evrei impotriva jidanilor ("Ionescu Defends the Hebrews against the Jews"), and De la Rasputin la Hitler ("From Rasputin to Hitler"). After World War ii, he continued to write polemical works against the pre-Communist regime, the old political parties, and the defunct Romanian dynasty. He also published Romanian translations of Jewish classics, such as *An-Ski's Dybbuk (1927), *Zangwill's King of the Schnorrers (1934), and many short stories by *Shalom Aleichem.

bibliography:

G. Cālinescu, Istoria Literaturii Romîne… (1941), 712.

[Abraham Feller]