ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Sito's coming-of-age narrative Ot dos zaynen mir set in Jewish children's home. Sito never occupied a particularly visible place in the crowded Soviet Yiddish literary landscape, though in addition to his stories for children and on children he worked successfully in the genre of literary parodies. Sito's poems and stories began to appear in Soviet Yiddish literary periodicals as early as 1927, when the author had only turned 17. The published text of a speech delivered by the educator Israel Shrayer in 1924, with numerous details coinciding with Sito's narrative, reveals him as the prototype of Shraga, the protagonist of These Are Us. In Sito's book, numerous examples illustrate the difficult but, ultimately, invariably successful transformation of a disobedient and unruly teenager into a committed Soviet citizen. The author pays special attention to three pupils among the intake: Gera, Berl and Beylka.
