Peretz Markish

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( 7 December [O.S. 25 November] 1895 in Polonnoye, currently Ukraine - 12 August 1952 in Moscow) was a Jewish Soviet writer who wrote in Yiddish. His very distant ancestors lived in Spain. As a child he attended a cheder and was singing in the choir of the local synagogue. He served as a private in the Russian Imperial Army during World War I. In the early twenties together with Leib Kvitko and others, he was a member of the Kiev group of Yiddish poets. He was an author of numerous poems, plays and several novels. His poetry was translated into Russian by Anna Akhmatova among others. He spent time living in Berlin, Paris, London, Warsaw and Rome before returning to Russia.

Initially, it was Markish who was supposed to be accompanying Mikhoels on the trip to the U.S.A. and other countries, but Markish was replaced by Itzik Feffer, an informer to the NKVD secret police. Markish was a member of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and together with many other Yiddish writers became a victim of the Night of the Murdered Poets .