Abraham Sutzkever (; ; July 15, 1913 – January 20, 2010) was an acclaimed

Yiddish Yiddish, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with ...

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

. ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' wrote that Sutzkever was "the greatest poet of

the Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...

Biography

Abraham (Avrom) Sutzkever was born on July 15, 1913, in Smorgon,

Vilna Governorate The Vilna Governorate was a province ('' guberniya'') of the Northwestern Krai of the Russian Empire. In 1897, the governorate covered an area of and had a population of 1,591,207 inhabitants. The governorate was defined by the Minsk Governo ...

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

, now

Smarhon Smarhon, or Smorgon, is a town in Grodno Region, Belarus. It serves as the administrative center of Smarhon District. It was the site of Smarhon air base, now mostly abandoned. Smarhon is located from the capital, Minsk. As of 2025, it has a p ...

Belarus Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Belarus spans an a ...

. During

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

, his family moved to Omsk, Siberia, where his father, Hertz Sutzkever, died. In 1921, his mother, Rayne (née Fainberg), moved the family to

Vilnius Vilnius ( , ) is the capital of and List of cities in Lithuania#Cities, largest city in Lithuania and the List of cities in the Baltic states by population, most-populous city in the Baltic states. The city's estimated January 2025 population w ...

, where Sutzkever attended

cheder A ''cheder'' (, lit. 'room'; Yiddish pronunciation: ''khéyder'') is a traditional primary school teaching the basics of Judaism and the Hebrew language. History ''Cheders'' were widely found in Europe before the end of the 18th century. L ...

. Sutzkever attended the Polish Jewish high school Herzliah, audited university classes in Polish literature, and was introduced by a friend to Russian poetry. His earliest poems were written in Hebrew. In 1930 Sutzkever joined the Jewish

scouting Scouting or the Scout Movement is a youth social movement, movement which became popularly established in the first decade of the twentieth century. It follows the Scout method of informal education with an emphasis on practical outdoor activi ...

organization, Bin ("Bee"), in whose magazine he published his first piece. There he also met his wife Freydke. In 1933, he became part of the writers’ and artists’ group , along with fellow poets Shmerke Kaczerginski,

Chaim Grade Chaim Grade (, GRAHD-uh) (April 4, 1910 – June 26, 1982) was one of the leading Yiddish writers of the twentieth century. Grade was born in Vilnius, Vilna, then within the Russian Empire, and died in The Bronx, New York (state), New York. He i ...

, and

Leyzer Volf Leyzer Volf (; ; born Eliezer Mekler; 1910, in Šnipiškės, Vilnius – April 1943, in Shakhrisabz) was a Yiddish poet and writer of the movement, best remembered for his poems ''Black Pearls'' (1939), ''Lyric and satire'' (1940), and ''Brown ...

. He married Freydke in 1939, a day before the start of

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. In 1941, following the Nazi occupation of Vilnius, Sutzkever and his wife were sent to the

Vilna Ghetto The Vilna Ghetto was a World War II Jewish ghetto established and operated by Nazi Germany in the city of Vilnius in the modern country of Lithuania, at the time part of the Nazi-administered . During the approximately two years of its existen ...

. Sutzkever and his friends hid a diary by

Theodor Herzl Theodor Herzl (2 May 1860 – 3 July 1904) was an Austria-Hungary, Austro-Hungarian Jewish journalist and lawyer who was the father of Types of Zionism, modern political Zionism. Herzl formed the World Zionist Organization, Zionist Organizat ...

, drawings by

Marc Chagall Marc Chagall (born Moishe Shagal; – 28 March 1985) was a Russian and French artist. An early modernism, modernist, he was associated with the School of Paris, École de Paris, as well as several major art movement, artistic styles and created ...

and Alexander Bogen, and other treasured works behind plaster and brick walls in the ghetto. His mother and newborn son were murdered by the Nazis. On September 12, 1943, he and his wife escaped to the forests, and together with fellow Yiddish poet Shmerke Kaczerginski, he fought the occupying forces as a partisan. Sutzkever joined a Jewish unit and was smuggled into the Soviet Union. Sutzkever's 1943 narrative poem, ''Kol Nidre'', reached the

Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, abbreviated as JAC, was an organization that was created in the Soviet Union during World War II to influence international public opinion and organize political and material support for the Soviet fight against ...

in Moscow, whose members included

Ilya Ehrenburg Ilya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg (, ; – August 31, 1967) was a Soviet writer, revolutionary, journalist and historian. Ehrenburg was among the most prolific and notable authors of the Soviet Union; he published around one hundred titles. He becam ...

and

Solomon Mikhoels Solomon (Shloyme) Mikhoels ( lso spelled שלוימע מיכאעלס during the Soviet era , – 13 January 1948) was a Soviet actor and the artistic director of the Moscow State Jewish Theater. Mikhoels served as the chairman of the Jewish ...

, as well as the exiled future president of Soviet

Lithuania Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, P ...

Justas Paleckis Justas Paleckis ( – 26 January 1980) was a Lithuanian Soviet author, journalist and politician. He was nominal acting president of Lithuania after the Soviet invasion while Lithuania was still ostensibly independent, in office from 17 June t ...

. They implored the

Kremlin The Moscow Kremlin (also the Kremlin) is a fortified complex in Moscow, Russia. Located in the centre of the country's capital city, the Moscow Kremlin (fortification), Kremlin comprises five palaces, four cathedrals, and the enclosing Mosco ...

to rescue him. So an aircraft located Sutzkever and Freydke in March 1944, and flew them to Moscow, where their daughter, Rina, was born. In February 1946, he was called up as a

witness In law, a witness is someone who, either voluntarily or under compulsion, provides testimonial evidence, either oral or written, of what they know or claim to know. A witness might be compelled to provide testimony in court, before a grand jur ...

at the

Nuremberg trials #REDIRECT Nuremberg trials {{redirect category shell, {{R from other capitalisation{{R from move ...

, testifying against Franz Murer, the murderer of his mother and son. After a brief sojourn in Poland and Paris, he emigrated to

Mandatory Palestine Mandatory Palestine was a British Empire, British geopolitical entity that existed between 1920 and 1948 in the Palestine (region), region of Palestine, and after 1922, under the terms of the League of Nations's Mandate for Palestine. After ...

, arriving in

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( or , ; ), sometimes rendered as Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and usually referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the Gush Dan metropolitan area of Israel. Located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline and with a popula ...

in 1947. Within two years, Sutzkever founded ''Di goldene keyt'' (The Golden Chain). Sutzkever was a keen traveller, touring South American jungles and African savannahs, where the sight of elephants and the song of a

Basotho The Sotho (), also known as the Basotho (), are a Sotho-Tswana ethnic group indigenous to Southern Africa. They primarily inhabit the regions of Lesotho, South Africa, Botswana and Namibia. The ancestors of the Sotho people are believed to h ...

chief inspired more Yiddish verse. Belatedly, in 1985 Sutzkever became the first Yiddish writer to win the prestigious

Israel Prize The Israel Prize (; ''pras israél'') is an award bestowed by the State of Israel, and regarded as the state's highest cultural honor. History Prior to the Israel Prize, the most significant award in the arts was the Dizengoff Prize and in Israel ...

for his literature. An English compendium appeared in 1991. Freydke died in 2003. Abraham Sutzkever died on January 20, 2010, in Tel Aviv at the age of 96. Rina and another daughter, Mira, survive him, along with two grandchildren.

Literary career

Sutzkever wrote poetry from an early age, initially in

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

. He published his first poem in ''Bin'', the Jewish scouts magazine. Sutzkever was among the Modernist writers and artists of the ''Yung Vilne'' ("Young Vilna") group in the early 1930s. In 1937, his first volume of Yiddish poetry, ''Lider'' (Songs), was published by the Yiddish

PEN International PEN International (known as International PEN until 2010) is a worldwide professional association, association of writers, founded in London in 1921 to promote friendship and intellectual co-operation among writers everywhere. The association ...

Club; a second, ''Valdiks'' (Of the Forest; 1940), appeared after he moved from Warsaw, during the interval of Lithuanian autonomy. In Moscow, he wrote a chronicle of his experiences in the Vilna ghetto (''Fun vilner geto'',1946), a poetry collection ''Lider fun geto'' (1946; “Songs from the Ghetto”) and began ''Geheymshtot'' ("Secret City",1948), an epic poem about Jews hiding in the sewers of Vilna. In 1949, Sutzkever founded the Yiddish literary quarterly '' Di goldene keyt'', Israel's only Yiddish literary quarterly, which he edited until its demise in 1995. Sutzkever resuscitated the careers of Yiddish writers from Europe, the Americas, the Soviet Union and Israel. Many in the Zionist movement, however, dismissed Yiddish as a defeatist diaspora argot. "They will not uproot my tongue," he retorted. "I shall wake all generations with my roar." Sutzkever's poetry was translated into Hebrew by

Nathan Alterman Nathan Alterman (; August 14, 1910 – March 28, 1970) was an Israeli poet, playwright, journalist, and translator. Though never holding any elected office, Alterman was highly influential in Labor Zionist politics, both before and after the es ...

Avraham Shlonsky Avraham Shlonsky (; ; March 6, 1900 – May 18, 1973) was a Russian-born Israeli poet and editor. He was influential in the development of modern Hebrew and its literature in Israel through his many acclaimed translations of literary classics, ...

and

Leah Goldberg Leah Goldberg or Lea Goldberg (; May 29, 1911, Königsberg – January 15, 1970, Jerusalem) was a prolific Hebrew-language poet, author, playwright, literary translator, illustrater and painter, and comparative literary researcher. Her wri ...

. In the 1930s, his work was translated into Russian by

Boris Pasternak Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (30 May 1960) was a Russian and Soviet poet, novelist, composer, and literary translator. Composed in 1917, Pasternak's first book of poems, ''My Sister, Life'', was published in Berlin in 1922 and soon became an imp ...

. Selected poems in Russian translation of were published in 2010.

Works

*''Di festung'' (1945; “The Fortress”) *About a Herring (1946) *''Yidishe gas'' (1948; “Jewish Street”) *''Sibir'' (1953; "Siberia") *''In midber Sinai'' (1957; "In the Sinai Desert") *''Di fidlroyz'' (1974; "The Fiddle Rose: Poems 1970–1972") *''Griner akvaryum'' (1975; “Green Aquarium”) *''Fun alte un yunge ksav-yadn'' (1982; "Laughter Beneath the Forest: Poems from Old and New Manuscripts")

Works in English translation

* ''Siberia: A Poem'', translated by Jacob Sonntag in 1961, part of the

UNESCO Collection of Representative Works The UNESCO Collection of Representative Works (or UNESCO Catalogue of Representative Works) was a UNESCO translation project that was active for about 57 years, from 1948 to about 2005. The project's purpose was to translate masterpieces of world ...

. * ''Burnt Pearls : Ghetto Poems of Abraham Sutzkever'', translated from the Yiddish by Seymour Mayne; introduction by Ruth R. Wisse. Oakville, Ont.: Mosaic Press, 1981. * ''The Fiddle Rose: Poems, 1970-1972, Abraham Sutzkever''; selected and translated by Ruth Whitman; drawings by

; introduction by Ruth R. Wisse. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990. * ''A. Sutzkever: Selected Poetry and Prose'', translated from the Yiddish by Barbara and Benjamin Harshav; with an introduction by Benjamin Harshav. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. * ''Laughter Beneath the Forest : Poems from Old and Recent Manuscripts by Abraham Sutzkever''; translated from the Yiddish by Barnett Zumoff; with an introductory essay by Emanuel S. Goldsmith. Hoboken, NJ: KTAV Publishing, 1996. * ''Sutzkever Essential Prose''; translated from the Yiddish by Zackary Sholem Berger (A Yiddish Book Center Translation); with an introduction by Heather Valencia. Amherst, MA: White Goat Press, 2020.

Awards and recognition

* 1969:

Itzik Manger Prize The Itzik Manger Prize for outstanding contributions to Yiddish literature (, ) was established in 1968, shortly before Itzik Manger's death in 1969. Manger "was and remains one of the best-known twentieth-century Yiddish poets." The Prize has bee ...

for Yiddish literature. * 1985:

for Yiddish literature. Sutzkever's poems have been translated into 30 languages.

Recordings

* Hilda Bronstein, ''A Vogn Shikh'', lyrics by Avrom Sutzkever, music by Tomas Novotny Yiddish Songs Old and New,

ARC Records American Record Corporation (ARC), also referred to as American Record Company, American Recording Corporation, or ARC Records, was an American record company in operation from 1929 to 1938, and again from 1978 to 1982. Overview ARC was cre ...

Karsten Troyke Karsten Troyke (born ''Karsten Bertolt Sellhorn'' on 14 August 1960 in Berlin) is a German singer of Jewish songs, as well as an actor and speaker. Early life Troyke was born to a family with some Jewish ancestry, but is not matrilineally Je ...

, ''Leg den Kopf auf meine Knie'', lyrics by

Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger (February 5, 1924 in Romania, 1924 – December 16, 1942 in Romania, 1942) was a Romanian-born German language, German-language poet. A History of the Jews in Romania, Jew, she was murdered in the Holocaust at the age of 1 ...

Itzik Manger Itzik Manger (30 May 1901, Czernowitz, then Austrian-Hungarian Empire – 21 February 1969, Gedera, Israel; ) was a prominent Yiddish language, Yiddish poet and playwright, a self-proclaimed folk bard, visionary, and 'master tailor' of the writ ...

and Abraham Sutzkever, music by

* Abraham Sutzkever, ''The Poetry of Abraham Sutzkever (Vilno Poet): Read in Yiddish'', produced by Ruth Wise on

Folkways Records Folkways Records was a record label founded by Moses Asch that documented folk, world, and children's music. It was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in 1987 and is now part of Smithsonian Folkways. History The Folkways Records & Service ...

Compositions

* "The Twin-Sisters" - "Der Tsvilingl", music by Daniel Galay, text by Avrum Sutzkever. Narrator (Yiddish) Michael Ben-Avraham, The Israeli String Quartet for Contemporary Music (Violin, Viola, Cello), percussion, piano. First performance: Tel-Aviv 2/10/2003 on the 90th birthday of Avrum Sutzkever. * "The Seed of Dream", music by

Lori Laitman Lori Laitman is an American composer who has composed multiple operas, choral works, and over 300 songs. Life Laitman was born in Long Beach, New York, in 1955.

, based on poems by Abraham Sutzkever as translated by C.K. Williams and Leonard Wolf. Commissioned by The Music of Remembrance organization in Seattle. First performed in May 2005 at

Benaroya Hall Benaroya Hall is the home of the Seattle Symphony in Downtown Seattle, Washington, United States. It features two auditoria, the S. Mark Taper Foundation Auditorium, a 2,500-seat performance venue, as well as the Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital ...

in Seattle by baritone Erich Parce, pianist Mina Miller, and cellist Amos Yang. Recent performance on January 28, 2008, by the Chamber Music Society of Southwest Florida by mezzo-soprano Janelle McCoy, cellist Adam Satinsky and pianist Bella Gutshtein of the Russian Music Salon. * Sutzkever's poem "Poezye" was set to music by composer

Alex Weiser Alex Weiser is an American composer of contemporary classical music. Early life and education Weiser was born in New York City to a Jewish family. He attended Stuyvesant High School and Yale University, and received a master's degree in Music The ...

as a part of his song cycle "and all the days were purple."

References

External links

Sutskever's work in English translation

Abraham Sutzkever among The Writers and Painters Group "Jung Vilna"

Catherine Madsen on Abraham Sutzkever's life
*
Mati Shemoelof on Abraham Sutzkever's documentary
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sutzkever, Abraham 1913 births 2010 deaths People from Smarhon People from Vilna Governorate Belarusian Jews Jews from the Russian Empire Soviet Holocaust survivors Soviet emigrants to Mandatory Palestine Israeli people of Belarusian-Jewish descent Jewish poets 20th-century Israeli poets Belarusian male poets Israel Prize in literature recipients Israel Prize in Yiddish literature recipients Yiddish-language poets Vilna Ghetto inmates History of YIVO 21st-century Israeli poets 20th-century Belarusian poets 21st-century Belarusian poets 20th-century male writers Polish male writers Israeli magazine founders Itzik Manger Prize recipients Witnesses to the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg