David Knout

Origins and early life

David Knout was born Duvid Meerovich Fixman at Orhei in Bessarabia, then in the Russian Empire, on 23 September 1900, into a Jewish family; when the region passed to Romania the family emigrated, and he reached Paris in 1920.

Work and career

He became one of the notable Russian-language poets of the emigration, admired by Vladislav Khodasevich and Marina Tsvetaeva, and co-founded the literary review La Nouvelle Maison; his verse turned steadily from exile toward the Jewish people and its return to its land. In 1942, in Toulouse, he founded with Abraham Polonski the Armée juive, a specifically Jewish armed resistance whose recruits swore their oath on a Bible and a blue and white flag, and which later became the Organisation juive de combat: its members ran escape lines to Spain, executed informers, and fought in the liberation of Paris, Lyon and Toulouse.

His wife Ariadna Scriabina, daughter of the composer Alexander Scriabin, had converted to Judaism and taken the name Sarah; she was one of the movement's founders and was killed by the Vichy Milice in Toulouse on 22 June 1944. Knout survived in Switzerland, emigrated to Israel in 1949, and died in Tel Aviv on 15 February 1955.