Chana Blanksztejn (floruit 1920s) was a

Polish-Jewish The history of the Jews in Poland dates back at least 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Jews, Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the long pe ...

writer and journalist, predominantly active in Vilna (now Vilnius, Lithuania). Noted for her significant contributions in literature and journalism, Blanksztejn was also recognised for her zealous advocacy of

women's suffrage Women's suffrage is the women's rights, right of women to Suffrage, vote in elections. Several instances occurred in recent centuries where women were selectively given, then stripped of, the right to vote. In Sweden, conditional women's suffra ...

. In the

1922 Polish legislative election Parliamentary elections were held in Poland on 5 November 1922, with Senate elections held a week later on 12 November.Dieter Nohlen & Philip Stöver (2010) ''Elections in Europe: A data handbook'', p1491 The elections were governed by the Ma ...

, she entered as a candidate from the Jewish Democratic People's Block, a wing of the

Folkspartei The Folkspartei () was founded after the 1905 pogroms in the Russian Empire by Simon Dubnow and Israel Efrojkin. The party took part in several elections in Poland and Lithuania in the 1920s and 1930s and did not survive the Holocaust. Ideology ...

, although she did not secure a win.

Literary work

Blanksztejn's literary oeuvre includes a posthumous collection of short stories titled "Fear and Other Stories", initially written in Yiddish and published in 1939. These tales provide a glimpse into the waning period of Eastern European Jewish culture and portray a modern outlook on the world, with the primary settings in Vilna and several locations across Europe, often against the backdrop of World War I and the Russian Civil Wars. The stories resonate with Blanksztejn's feminist and activist ideologies, exploring themes encompassing female independence, equality, and fulfilling work. Later, this collection was translated into English, bringing to light the life and work of a widely admired woman whose memory was on the brink of obscurity. This translation is considered a significant act of cultural recovery, particularly in association with feminist translation. The themes addressed in these stories are diverse and are quintessential to Yiddish and interwar literature, highlighting panic and desperation, poverty, female education and professionalisation, and the complexities of romantic relationships.

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* {{DEFAULTSORT:Blaksztejn, Chana 19th-century births 20th-century deaths 19th-century Polish Jews 20th-century Polish women writers Polish suffragists Polish feminists Jewish feminists Folkspartei politicians Jewish suffragists Jewish women writers