Abraham Sutzkever
Abraham Sutzkever ( Hebrew אברהם סוצקברor Yiddish אַבֿרהם סוצקעווער; also Avrom or Avrohom Sutzkever or Sutzkewer ; born July 15, 1913 in Smorgon , Russian Empire (now Belarus ); died January 19, 2010 in Tel Aviv ), survivor of the Vilna ghetto , was one of the most important contemporary poets in Yiddish . In his early days he mainly addressed the Jewish sufferings during the Nazi era in his writings , later he turned more to Israeli topics. His works have been translated into over 30 languages.
Life
Abraham Sutzkever was born in 1913 in the small town of Smorgon in the Vilnius Governorate (now Smarhon , Belarus ). The Jews living there were deported by the Russians during the First World War in 1915 as they were collectively suspected of collaborating with the advancing German troops. The Sutzkever family settled in Omsk . The Siberian landscape shaped the boy deeply. After the father died in 1920, the mother moved with the children to Vilna. Abraham Sutzkever attended the Polish-Jewish high school there and was (since 1930) a member of the Jewish scout group Bin ("Bee"). About its head, Dr. Max Weinreich , he got in touch with the YIVO Institute , where he took courses on Jewish literature in addition to events at the University of Vilnius . Since the early 1930s he belonged to the avant-garde Jewish writers and artists Jung-Wilne , but remained an outsider there due to his aestheticism.
His first poem appeared in the magazine of his boy scout group in 1932. From 1934 he published regularly in Warsaw and Vilnius magazines. In 1937 his first volume of poetry, Lider (Lieder) was published.
The Vilna Ghetto, which only a few of the 80,000 people crowded there survived, was established in 1941. Abraham Sutzkever's newborn son and mother were murdered there. He himself participated in the Fareinigte Partisaner Organisatzije founded in 1942 . Together with a ghetto brigade, he managed to save many rare manuscripts and books from being attacked by the Germans. These documents could be brought to New York after the war and now form the "Sutzkever-Kaczerginski Collection" in the New York YIVO Institute. In highly poetic poems and short pieces of prose, he recorded what was happening around him.
In 1943 Abraham Sutzkever and his wife managed to escape from the ghetto to the Naroczer forests. In 1944 he reported from Moscow on the systematic extermination of Lithuanian and Polish Jews; he was also involved in the black book published by Ilya Ehrenburg and Wassili Grossman on the genocide of the Soviet Jews . On February 27, 1946, he testified at the Nuremberg trials . One of the perpetrators he accused there was Franz Murer , who was acquitted in Austria in 1963.
In 1947 Sutzkever emigrated with his wife via Poland to Erez Israel , where he has since lived in Tel Aviv , most recently in a three-bed room in a modest old people's home. Since 1947 he was also a member of the PEN club and spokesman for Yiddish literature. In 1948 he founded the journal Di goldene kejt ("The golden chain": symbol for the survival of the Jewish people) for literature and essays in Yiddish, of which he remained editor until 1995.
After a long period of suffering - u. a. if he suffered from excruciating skin cancer - Abraham Sutzkever died in Tel Aviv in 2010 at the age of 97.
Abraham Sutzkever is the recipient of the Israel Prize (1985) and an honorary citizen of Tel Aviv. His materials, especially about the Vilna Ghetto, are in the Sutzkever-Kaczerginski Collection in YIVO New York.
Works (selection)
Appearance or date of origin known
- A Masknbal , 1933 (" A Masked Ball ")
- Lider , 1937 ("Lieder", his first volume of poetry)
- Waldiks , 1940 ("Forests")
- Kol Nidre , 1943 ("Kol Nidre", poetic monologue based on the title of the prayer for the Day of Atonement)
- Di fortress , 1945 ("The Fortress", in memory of the Vilna Ghetto)
- Wilner geto 1941-1944 , 1946 ("Wilna Ghetto 1941-1944", diary / report published in Moscow and Paris )
- Lider fun geto , 1946 ("Songs from the Ghetto")
- Yidische Gas , 1948 ("Jewish Street")
- Gehejmschtot , 1948 ("Hidden City")
- In fajer-wogn , 1952 ("Im Feuerwagen")
- In midber Sinai , 1957 ("In the Sinai Desert")
- Oasis , 1960 ("Oase")
- Gajstike erd , 1961 ("Spiritual Earth")
- Firkantike ojsjes un mojfsim , 1968 ("Square signs and wonders")
- Tsajtike penemer , 1970 ("Contemporary Faces")
- Griner akwarium , 1975 ("Green Aquarium" - stories)
- Lider fun togbuch , 1977 ("Songs from the diary" h)
- Dortn wu es nechtikn di schtern , 1979 ("Where the stars sleep" - stories)
- Tuesday night in geto , 1979 ("The first night in the ghetto")
Works without year or not determined
- Di nevue fun shvartsaplen ("The Prophecy of the Inner Eye" - Stories)
- Sibir ("Siberia")
Works in German translation
- Griner akwarium - Green Aquarium. Prose pieces. Yiddish and German , Suhrkamp, Frankfurt 1996. ISBN 3-518-22210-4
- Songs from the sea of death. Poems , selected and transferred by Hubert Witt , Ammann, Zurich 2009. ISBN 978-3-250-10531-2
- Wilner Ghetto 1941–1944 , translated by Hubert Witt, Ammann, Zurich 2009. ISBN 978-3-250-10530-5
- Walk over words like a minefield. Poetry and prose , translated and edited by Peter Comans, Campus, Frankfurt 2009. ISBN 978-3-593-38906-6
- Armin Eidherr , ed. And translator: “Gehat hob ikh a heym. I had a home '”. Contemporary Yiddish literature. Eye, Landeck (Tirol) 1999 ISBN 3-901735-05-4
literature
- Z. Shazar (Ed.): Yovel-Bukh tsum Fuftsikstn Geboyrentog fun Avram Suzkeiver. 1963.
- Joseph Leftwich: Abraham Sutzkever: Partisan Poet. New York 1971.
- John F. Oppenheimer (Red.) And a .: Lexicon of Judaism. 2nd Edition. Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, Gütersloh u. a. 1971, ISBN 3-570-05964-2 , col. 787.
- Günter Stemberger : History of Jewish Literature. 1977.
- Yehiel Szeintuch: Abraham Sutzkever. In: Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust. Volume 4. 1990.
- Ludger Heid : Abraham Sutzkewer. In: Julius Hans Schoeps (Ed.): New Lexicon of Judaism. Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, Gütersloh / Munich 1992, ISBN 3-570-09877-X .
- Daniel Kac: Wilno Jerozolimą było. Rzecz o Abrahamie Sutkeverze. Wydawnictwo Pogranicza, 2003.
Web links
- Literature by and about Abraham Sutzkever in the catalog of the German National Library
- Abraham Sutzkever in the Bibliotheca Iiddica
- Stefana Sabin: Obituary. In: NZZ
References and comments
- ↑ Shmerke Kaczerginski was a fellow poet of Sutzkever and lyricist of the song by Ponar commissioned by the Vilna Jewish Council
- ↑ as "Abram Gerzewitsch Suzkewer", International Military Court Nuremberg (ed.): The trial of the main war criminals before the International Military Court (November 14, 1945 to October 1, 1946). Official text in German. , Vol. 8, p. 335 ff
- ↑ See also the identical piece by Perez
- ↑ Extensive epic poem, describes the struggle for survival of ten Jews who hid in the underground canal system of Vilna
- ↑ With poems by AS
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Sutzkever, Abraham |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Sûsqewer, Avraham; Suzkever, Abram; Suzkewer, Abram Gerzewitsch |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Israeli poet |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 15, 1913 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Smorgon , Belarus |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 19, 2010 |
| Place of death | Tel Aviv-Jaffa |