[1][2] Peretz Markish was born in 1895 in Polonne, the Russian Empire (now Ukraine) to a Sephardi Jewish[citation needed] family.

A second and final volume of Halyastre, edited with Oser Varshawski, appeared in Paris in 1924 with a cover illustration by Marc Chagall.

There he published a number of optimistic poems glorifying the communist regime, including Mayn dor ("My Generation"; 1927) and the epic Brider ("Brothers"; 1929).

Markish joined the Soviet Communist party in early 1942[3] when he took a job at the International Division of Sovinformburo, while a colleague Teumin was the press agent.

In April 1942, Stalin had ordered the formation of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee designed to influence international public opinion and organize political and material support for the Soviet fight against Nazi Germany, particularly from the West.

Following Markish's official rehabilitation in November 1955, several comprehensive editions of his poems, translated into Russian by Anna Akhmatova,[5] were published in 1957.

Markish is one of the three heroes, with his fellow Yiddish poets Uri Zvi Grinberg (1896–1981) and Melekh Ravitsh (1893–1976), of Gilles Rozier's novel D'un pays sans amour.