A Vital Partnership

<p>October 27, 1996</p> <p>Above the living room couch in my parent&#8217;s apartment hangs a painting of a couple engaged in a passionate, loving embrace. Beautifully imprecise brush strokes portray the love between these two characters in dark, muted browns and grays. The features on their faces are primeval, almost Neanderthal. The lines forming the bodies of the man and woman merge sensuously, making the distinction between them ambiguous. As a young child, I would gaze at the painting, trying to work out if it represented one or two figures. This melting of faces and the dark background create a feeling of ancestral pre-history emanating from the scene. The figures look like they have just been created from the dust of chaos beyond the outline of their bodies. I always imagined them as Adam and Eve; the first lovers. </p> <p>This familiar piece of art used to hang in my grandparents apartment in New York City. In their living room cluttered with books and papers, the amorous painting was unusual. In a house ruled by intellect, the ancient lovers seemed to remind its inhabitants of the power of emotions.</p> <p>Seeing the painting evokes one of my strongest childhood memories: After driving with my parents and sister for five hours, we finally arrive at my grandparents Chelsea apartment building in New York City. We pile into an elevator which whisks us to the fifteenth floor, where we knock on the door of apartment 15D. After a few seconds, the door opens to a warm gushing of kisses and Yiddish from my Sabta. After the customary, Annale, youve grown so much! I am ushered into the living room where my Saba is writing intently. He pinches my cheek with an affectionate grip just short of painful, and barks in an accent rich with experience, Who are you?</p> <p>This was not a confused, curious inquiry from a diseased mind, but a tough existential challenge which required a thoughtful response. My grandfathers question might seem a strange and intimidating one to ask a five-year-old, but I was not surprised at all. In fact, all along the New Jersey turnpike, I had been wrestling with this very question. I knew from experience that when we reached our destination I would have to define and defend my existence in this world. I never gave him the same answer twice. Each time I saw my Saba, my childs brain concocted a different response to his fundamental and unanswerable question, so that over the years I stockpiled a multitude of ways of thinking about myself. From a very early age, this mentor of mine challenged me to think in a sophisticated, analytical way.</p> <p>My grandfather taught me an appreciation for the past and a passion for the present. He instilled in me an understanding of my familys roots in eastern Europe and a reminder of my Jewish identity. Every time I saw my Saba, he told me a different story about some stage of his incredibly full life, which included a childhood in provincial Poland, a career as a young reporter in Paris, the loss of his family to the Nazis, and a successful, journalistic tenure in New York. He covered such events as the Spanish Civil War, the opening of the United Nations and the conception of the state of Israel. Fluent in eight languages, he wrote for papers in almost as many, but his favorite language was Yiddish, his mother tongue. His powerful passion for his work constantly amazed me. After hours of silent and intense thought, I saw fires ignite in his eyes when an idea for a new story finally crystallized. Following this moment of revelation, his dedication to his work bordered on obsession, sometimes preventing him from appreciating the joy of a family occasion. My Saba looked to the past with reverence, to the present with passion, but to the future with cynicism.</p> <p>During the last few years of his life, my grandfathers aging body found it harder to do the work his fully functional mind so loved. As his ability to write declined, he lost his way of connecting to the past and the present, and was left with only his pessimism toward the future. Prompted by a question from my sister, however, our Saba replied that the soul does not exist on its own, but is created by the memories others hold of a person after his death. My grandfather wanted his loved ones to create his soul by remembering him long after his death. My grandfathers soul lives on in me through his repeated challenge, who are you? which continues to echo in my head.</p> <p>When my grandfather died, my grandmother closed up their New York apartment and scattered their possessions among the family. Happily, the lovers ended up in my living room. The painting brings me back to those telling moments in the apartment when my Saba challenged my intellect with his question. The presence of the lovers behind him added a caring element to his inquiry. The sensuous image reminds me of an emotional side of my grandfather that was seldom seen in his busy, intellectual life. I see my grandparents in the wise faces of the lovers. They were once lovers, as were their parents, and their parents, all the way back to Adam and Eve.</p>

<p>October 13, 1996</p> <p>It is tough for me to write a biography of my father, but these notes distilled from various sources contain the facts and some impressions from others. Since I began to prepare these notes for publicity purposes in connection with the donation of my parent&#8217;s Yiddish books to the University of Maryland Libraries, my father has had a massive stroke on September 27.</p> <p>My sister called from Israel Sept 28 and I left for Israel on October 1. My father would have made something of the coincidence that he was in the same Tel Aviv hospital where Itzhak Rabin died almost a year ago. My father was unconscious, but breathing on his own. He was not responsive to our words or touch, and the doctors held out little hope for recovery. He remained stable but critical till he died on October 8, 1996</p> <p>The funeral on October 10 was the most difficult day. I went to identify his body, which was wrapped only in cloth and a Jewish prayer shawl. Seeing his still face confirmed the reality, but it seemed tranquil compared to the labored breathing among wires, tubes, and oxygen hoses in the hospital. About 45 people joined my mother and sister as we walked under the hot noon sun to a covered place where several people made short emotional speeches. Then to the grave site where my father was laid to rest in the open grave, and several of us shoveled the dirt over his body.</p> <p>Mourners commented that my father&#8217;s death marked the end of a civilization and a period of history&#8230;that my father was a poet among journalists, and that his journalism was a form of poetry.</p> <p>Jewish tradition is to have a week-long mourning period at home, where visitors have been coming to tell stories, remember, and laugh-cry. My mother is strong most of the time &#8212; thinking of which unfinished projects to pursue and whether she could travel to Paris or New York &#8212; but then she begins to realize the magnitude of her loss. I am saddened, but push forward with my purposeful self and do what needs doing.</p> <p>(October 20: I returned to Washington, DC last night still sad, but warmed by the many supportive notes, calls, and emails. I am still inspired by my mother&#8217;s life-affirming attitude, but worried about her weak state, and my sister&#8217;s multiple heavy burdens. Next Sunday there will be a family gathering near New York City. Then on November 3, a planned ceremony around my parent&#8217;s donation of their Yiddish books to the University of Maryland will become a memorial event.)</p> <p>In my recollection, my parents always worked as a team. I often heard my father dictating in Yiddish, while my mother wrote her mystical shorthand notations. She would re-read sentences while suggesting improvements and he would revise repeatedly, searching for the appropriate phrasing and asking her for names, dates, etc. Then she would repeatedly re-type the text for several passes of cutting and pasting with strips of white and yellow paper covered with handwritten revisions. The final retyping would be with multiple carbon copies to be mailed to papers in New York, Israel, France, Mexico, Argentina, South Africa, or Australia. It was accepted that articles appeared with his byline, but my father did acknowledge the vital partnership with my mother, who, in turn, admired his ability to create a story and find a powerful way to tell it.</p> <p>Every trip brought a harvest of papers, photos, books, and notebooks filled with interviews. My mother maintained an elaborate filing system by topic and personality with clippings and notes. This was a remarkable resource for their writing.</p> <p>My father had an uncanny journalist&#8217;s ability to find the right people and to get them to tell their stories. Whenever we traveled he would start conversations with people who turned out to have played a role in some important event, and would be willing to tell their story. He would weave articles together with historical ironies and compelling coincidences, and embroider with local color and personal impression.</p> <p>During the day he wrote publicity, mostly in Yiddish, for the United Jewish Appeal in New York, telling about activities in New York and Israel in a weekly page in the large circulation Yiddish press. This gave him contact and influence, and paid the rent. At night when he came home, he wrote his articles for the New York Yiddish newspapers &#8211; the Forwearts, The Day, and the Jewish Morning Journal. His journalistic writing, interviews, and deadline chasing were his identity, there was little else.</p> <p>I have great pleasure when I travel and people around the world speak glowingly about my father&#8217;s writing and his influence on their lives. I am always proud to be introduced as the son of S. L. Shneiderman.</p> <p>My 21-year old daughter, Sara, sent a fax for the funeral with these thoughts: This summer during one of the rare and precious intimate moments that I have ever shared with Saba, he said something to me that I think you will all appreciate today. As he and I sat on the Ramat Aviv beach listening to children&#8217;s laughter and watching the sunset, Saba dabbled his toes in the warm Mediterranean water and, for a priceless moment, opened himself up to my questions about spirituality and death. Wagging his finger at me just as he would have pinched my cheek when I was younger, he explained to me his understanding of the human soul: &#8220;there is no such thing as an independent &#8216;soul&#8217;. Soul is the memory that people who have cared for you create.&#8221; So Saba&#8217;s soul, as he would have it, is here and very much present in this moment as we begin to create it. In this way, our mourning here is a generative process, the birth of something beautiful and new, rather than a finite end to anything.</p> <p>Avraham Lis, Director of Beit Shalom-Aleichem in Tel Aviv, wrote (in Yiddish): Please accept our heartfelt words of consolation on the death of your husband and father Shmuel-Leib Shneiderman, who was one of the most richly-spirited persons as well as a first-rank writer and journalist. His work as a creator, a poet, a writer of prose, a translator, and an editor, is beyond measure. His unique contribution to Yiddish literature and journalism was &#8211; and shall remain &#8211; of a special dimension. With his prolific output, his individuality, he enriched and stimulated both his readers and the literary environment.</p>

<p><strong>Samuel L. Shneiderman, June 15, 1906 &#8211; October 8, 1996</strong></p> <p><strong>Biography</strong></p> <p>S. L. Shneiderman was born in Kazimierz, Poland, and educated at Warsaw University. In 1931 he became the Paris correspondent for a group of Jewish dailies in Poland. He then covered the Spanish Civil War, about which he wrote a two-volume account.</p> <p>In 1940 Mr. Shneiderman came to the United States and acquired American citizenship in 1949. He edited the first chronicle of life and death in the Warsaw Ghetto, <em>The Diary of Mary Berg</em>, as well as the war memoirs of Gemma LaGuardia Gluck, sister of New York City&#8217;s Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia.</p> <p>Mr. Shneiderman&#8217;s books <em>Between Fear and Hope</em> and <em>The Warsaw Heresy </em>were acclaimed as major contributions to the understanding of the turbulent events in Communist Poland. His documentary film <em>The Last Chapter</em> was hailed by <em>The New York Times</em> as &#8220;the most graphic and eloquent recollection of the thousand-year history of Poland&#8217;s Jews.&#8221;</p> <p>Mr. Shneiderman was a regular contributor to the <em>Jewish Daily Forward</em> in New York and to Yiddish dailies throughout the world. His writings appeared in<em> Midstream</em> (New York), <em>L&#8217;Arche</em> (Paris), and <em>Al Hamishmar</em> (Tel Aviv). Past president of the Yiddish PEN, Mr. Shneiderman lived in New York.</p> <p><strong>Family History:</strong><br /> Son of Abraham and Chana (Mandelbaum) Sznajderman; March 25, 1933 married Eileen (Hala) Szymin, born March 15, 1908 (daughter of an pioneering publisher of Jewish and Hebrew books in Warsaw), and went to live in Paris; came to the United States in 1940, naturalized citizen, 1949. Moved to Ramat Aviv, Israel, 1994. Died October 8, 1996.</p> <p>Children: Helen Shneiderman Sarid (b. 1937), married Haim Sarid, 1965, Ramat Aviv, Israel (teaches English at Tel Aviv University), sons Yechiel, Daniel, Ariel; Ben Shneiderman (b. 1947), Washington, DC (Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland), daughters Sara and Anna.</p> <p>Home: 5 Lachower Street, Ramat Aviv, Israel, and 280 Ninth Avenue (15D), of New York, NY 10001.</p>

<p>translated by Fannie Peczenik from &#8220;What Time is it On the Jewish Clock&#8221;</p> <p>September 14, 2000</p> <p>Forlorn and grief-stricken in the painful weeks and months after the death of my husband, S. L. Shneiderman, I feverishly began to organize the stacks of papers that had accumulated in our little apartment in Ramat Aviv. I had a strong desire to hold on to the past, which meant tracing Shneiderman&#8217;s literary career step-by-step.</p> <p>Even in the last few days of his life, he continued to devour the newspapers and magazines (in Hebrew, Yiddish, English, or other languages) that were delivered by mail or bought each day at neighborhood kiosks. He still read, cut out clippings, took notes (writing by himself or dictating to me) for future articles, although it was already clear he would never live to write them.</p> <p>Through the long decades we worked together, it was my responsibility to save and file his published works, news stories and longer essays, only a fraction of which ever appeared in book form.</p> <p>Throughout most of the tragic twentieth century, our lives were busy and bustling and, often, before we had time to finish with a current topic, something new occurred in the Jewish world or an international cultural event fired Shneiderman&#8217;s creative imagination. And so we were always on the run, hurrying to be on the scene wherever the news was happening.</p> <p>We would come back from every trip carrying bundles of notes, books, and magazines that Shneiderman&#8217;s lively, evocative prose style would transform into compelling articles on contemporary events seen both from a Jewish perspective and from that of the world at large.</p> <p>Writing did not come as easily to Shneiderman as readers of his often breathtaking descriptions might think. He showed no mercy to his own manuscripts; whole pages were frequently consigned to the waste paper basket. If he only rejected half a page, then a pair of scissors and paste were deployed. Unfortunately, I learned to use a word processor too late.</p> <p>Shneiderman worked best under pressure. For a journalist this means at the eleventh hour &#8212; while the typesetter was waiting for the manuscript or a telegram with the latest news report was on the way. Even when the <em>Forwerts</em> became a weekly, the editors still had to wait until the very last minute for Shneiderman&#8217;s articles.</p> <p>After I arrived in New York in 1940, I took a course in Yiddish stenography given by the Workmen&#8217;s Circle; the stenographer&#8217;s notebook served us both well.</p> <p>When he was preparing one of his longer pieces of reportage, Shneiderman would often spend days searching for the first sentence. He didn&#8217;t believe in preambles:  the first paragraph presented the reader with a concrete fact pointing to the subject under discussion. Not until later in the article did he permit himself to import memories, comparisons, and anecdotes.  One sentence led to another and it was impossible to know how the article would end.</p> <p>As his research and interviews show, Shneiderman was particularly interested in the problem of Jewish assimilation, conversion to Christianity, and the return to Judaism. This was not a new phenomenon in Jewish history because during the centuries of Diaspora, foreign influences were unavoidable and, in fact, often enriched Jewish culture, as it created new links in the golden chain of deeply rooted values and traditions.</p> <p>In <em>When the Vistula Spoke Yiddish</em>, Shneiderman addressed the problem of assimilation through the story of the nineteenth-century Jew from Kuzmir, Itzchak Hoga. And in <em>Ilya Ehrenburg</em>, Shneiderman described the threefold division of that great writer&#8217;s identity: Jew, Russian writer, and man of Western European culture. Shneiderman again analyzed the same problem in essays on Heinrich Heine and, especially, Julian Tuwim. A Jew from Lodz, Tuwim was the most prominent Polish poet of the twentieth century; Shneiderman admired his work, wrote a great deal about him, and translated some of his poems. Contemplating these Jews estranged from their tradition, Shneiderman searched their works for that quintessence of Jewish identity, <em>dos pintele yid</em>, which usually surfaces at critical moments in history.</p> <p>At the end, when Shneiderman could no longer travel far, his friends and colleagues asked him why he didn&#8217;t write a memoir. His answer was that his books and articles contained enough of his reminiscences and experiences, but the stimulus for recounting them had always come from contemporary events.</p> <p>Nevertheless, among the papers on his desk, I found a substantial manuscript entitled, &#8220;My Beginnings as a Yiddish Writer &#8212; notes for an autobiography.&#8221;  As I remember, these were the notes for a talk he gave in Canada. He always prepared himself well for his lectures, so these notes  can be regarded as his memoir.</p> <p>The manuscript begins with these words: &#8220;To retrace the steps in my career as a Yiddish writer &#8212; to return to the beginning &#8212; would be no small task. It would mean going back to the origins of  modern Yiddish literature, as well as to Jewish political and social life in the reborn Polish republic.&#8221;</p> <p>In these memoirs, Shneiderman talks about his <em>shtetl,</em> Kazimierz on the Wistula (or Kuzmir, as it was known in Yiddish); his family; his love for nature and for the life of the Polish peasants.</p> <p>That was a time when, in Poland as elsewhere, artists and writers extolled village life. In 1924, the Polish writer, W. Reymont, was awarded the Nobel prize for his novel, <em>The Peasants</em>., which appeared in an excellent Yiddish translation by Schlomo Rosenberg, a close friend of Shneiderman&#8217;s. Incidentally, Rosenberg later became well-known for his Yiddish historical novels; he was also Sholem Asch&#8217;s secretary for fifteen years. It is worth noting that Sholem Asch himself was a candidate for the Nobel prize for <em>A Shtetl</em>, which, in its use of the rich, idiomatic language studied by Polish enthnographers and students of folklore, can be seen as the Yiddish answer to Reymont&#8217;s novel.</p> <p>The same kind of admiration for Polish village life is found in Shneiderman&#8217;s first book of poems, <em>Gilderne Feigl (Gilded Birds)</em>, which was published in 1927, two years after he arrived in Warsaw. His second volume of poetry, <em>Feiern in  Shtot (Unrest in Town</em>), which appeared in 1932, depicts the author&#8217;s youthful experiences when, like most young Yiddish writers, he came to the big city from his small home town. The  poems here are imbued with contemporary social issues &#8212; poverty, unemployment, rapid industrial expansion, rejection of war and militarism &#8212; as well as lyrical longings for his hometown. Some of the poems were published in the leading Yiddish weekly in Warsaw, <em>Literarische Bletter (Literary Pages)</em>, edited by Nachman Mayzel.</p> <p>The poems Shneiderman wrote in the first few years after he came to New York in 1940, are much better known. By then the Nazis had already inflicted their savagery on Poland and we were overcome with anxiety about the fate of the Jews, especially our own family and countless friends. That cycle of songs, which was to be called, <em>The Hudson is My Witness</em>, was never published in book form, and only a few of the poems appeared in newspapers.</p> <p>In 1925, when Shneiderman came to Warsaw from Kuzmir and wrote poems about poverty and the revolutionary ferment that dominated the Polish capital, he was, at the same time, carried away by the creative forces driving all aspects of Jewish culture.</p> <p>Despite increasing assimilation among the Jewish intelligentsia &#8212; which older Yiddish writers, like Z. Segalowitch, deplored; Segalowitch waged a war against what he called the <em>shmendrikes</em> (wise guys) who were becoming estranged from their own culture &#8212; the young Shneiderman saw great opportunities for himself as a Yiddish writer. His energy and ambition were virtually inexhaustible. He tried every literary genre: he wrote poems, published interviews with Polish writers in <em>Literarische Bletter </em>, translated Polish poems and novels into Yiddish, and wrote songs for the Yiddish theatre.  Years later, this is how Melech Ravitz, in his book <em>Mein Leksikon (My Lexicon)</em>, good-humoredly characterized this early period in Shneiderman&#8217;s career:</p> <p>&#8220;Shneiderman brought poems with him from Kuzmir, many poems, a good knowledge of Polish, and a readiness to undertake every kind of literary endeavor: an article, a review, a translation, a poem, a short story, a news report&#8230;I once even wrote a little lampoon against him when he was a novice poet and journalist and the piece was a big hit among his fellow writers. From this, I deduce that in the literary community you don&#8217;t have to wait for a Nobel Prize or world fame to find rivals. You can have them right at the first rung of your career.</p> <p>Because of my attack, Shneiderman became three times as energetic and he attacked me on three fronts. First, he sent me some poems under a pseudonym; he fooled me and I gave the poems a good review. Second, he attacked me in print. Third, he submitted the case to the judgment of our fellow writers&#8230;Needless to say, we were soon reconciled and even became great friends.&#8221;</p> <p>In those first few years in Warsaw, besides exploring a variety of literary genres, Shneiderman also became interested in the new art of the cinema.</p> <p>In September 1928, the first Yiddish journal devoted to the cinema, <em>Film  Velt (Film World)</em>, appeared in Warsaw.  The journal was edited by Saul Goskin and Mark Tannenbaum and the two most important articles in this first issue were by Shneiderman. We were reminded of all this by Jim Hoberman, author of the great work (in English) on the history of Yiddish film, <em>Bridge of Light: Yiddish Films Between Two Worlds</em>. This richly illustrated, 400-page book was published in New York in 1991 by the Museum of Modern Art in collaboration with Schocken Books. The museum organized a large exhibit on Yiddish films (we attended the opening of the exhibit) and for six  months showed a Yiddish film every week. The film festival was made possible by the National Center for Yiddish Film at Brandeis University in Boston, which collected the old films and restored many of them.</p> <p>Hoberman brought our early years back to us when he sent us a copy of the first issue of <em>Film Velt</em> from 1928, which contains Shneiderman&#8217;s two articles. One of the articles, &#8220;Film Has Deep Meaning,&#8221; is signed by S. L. Shneiderman, and in it he argues that the new art of movie making is an important form of cultural entertainment for the masses. He emphasizes the social significance of the cinema: international, it brings together citizens from every land, opposes war, and appeals to a wide audience.</p> <p>The second essay, &#8220;Behind the Scenes of <em>In the Polish Woods,</em>&#8221; recounts the excitement of making a film based on the novel by Yosef Opatoshu, which had aroused a great deal of interest. The movie, a monumental work, was produced by Leo Forbert, who was already well-known, and directed by Jonas Turkow; the screenplay was written by H. Bojm. Forbert and Bojm already had two popular Yiddish films to their credit: <em>Tkies-Kaf (The Agreement)</em> and <em>Lamed-Vovnik (The Hidden Saint)</em>.</p> <p>Fascinated by the broad historical scope of the film, Shneiderman followed its production very closely. He once took me along to the set to watch the film being made. The outdoor scenes were filmed in the region around Piaseczno, a shtetl near Warsaw, where, incidentally, my uncle, Mendel Segal, who was the scribe (secretary) for the Jewish community, lived. The scenes were shot in a beautiful part of a dense forest, near a lake. The trip was a romantic adventure for us and Shneiderman&#8217;s enthusiasm was boundless.</p> <p>Unfortunately, the whole enterprise, in which Polish filmmakers were also involved, came to a disappointing end. Because of protests from both Jewish religious quarters and Polish government authorities, some scenes were cut and the film soon disappeared from the screen. But the film quickly gained full recognition in America.</p> <p>The article on <em>In the Polish Woods</em> was printed under Shneiderman&#8217;s pseudonym, &#8220;Emil.&#8221; He was known by that name among his colleagues, especially in Yiddish theatre, and that is what my family called him. In his own family and in Kuzmir at large, he was still known by his real name, Shmuel-Leib.</p> <p>The journal <em>Film Velt</em> appeared for ten months, from September, 1928, until the summer of 1929. It may have been the only one of its kind in the entire history of the Yiddish press.</p> <p>In Israel, in 1988, at a conference on the history of the Jews in Poland held in Jerusalem, Shneiderman had another encounter that also reminded him of his early years in Warsaw. Among the scholars present at the conference was the Polish art historian, Prof. Jerzy Malinowski, who had just finished a book on the Yiddish avant-garde movement centered on the journal, <em>Yung Yiddish (Young Yiddish)</em>, published in Lodz from 1918-1925. Researching the history of Polish art after World War I, Prof. Malinowski came upon many poets and artists with Jewish names. That led him to <em>Yung Yiddish</em> because, despite denunciations from the antisemitic press, many of the Polish avant-garde artists participated in the Jewish movement&#8217;s exhibitions and literary gatherings.</p> <p>In the first of a series of essays on Prof. Malinowski&#8217;s book, Shneiderman wrote:</p> <p>&#8220;I was deeply moved by the book about <em>Yung Yiddish</em> and, unnerved, I devoured page after page&#8230;all of a sudden the writers and artists murdered in Hitler&#8217;s death camps and in the ghettoes at Lodz and Warsaw rose up alive before me. Only a few, like Moshe Broderson and the painter Yankl Adler, survived the Holocaust, but they have since passed away.</p> <p>That wonderful moment of my youth came back to me in all its colors, the moment when I first arrived in Lodz and Warsaw and there came face-to-face with the poets and artists of <em>Yung Yiddish</em>. Along with his book, Prof. Malinowski gave me a photo of my portrait painted by Wolf Weintraub in 1925. Weintraub was then already a well-known artist and he had been a great friend to me during my &#8216;debut&#8217; in Warsaw. This portrait (which, nonetheless, bears little resemblance to its subject) is reproduced in Prof. Malinowski&#8217;s monograph as an example of expressionism, of which  Weintraub was one of the pioneers in Poland.&#8221;</p> <p>Beneath the portrait is written:  &#8220;W. Weintraub &#8212; Portrait of the young poet, S. L. Shneiderman.&#8221;  Weintraub also designed the cover for Shneiderman&#8217;s first volume of poetry, <em>Gilderne Feigl</em>.</p> <p>For many years, the futurist manifestoes of Moshe Broderson, styled after V. Mayakovsky, continued to resonate among Yiddish poets. This can be seen, for example, in the speech Shneiderman gave at the Congress for the Defense of Culture in Paris, in 1935. The speech (published in <em>Literarische Bletter</em>, July 19, 1935) begins as follows:</p> <p>&#8220;The man addressing you today is a citizen of the Land of Yiddish, a land without barracks, without soldiers &#8212; a land in which a pen is the only weapon. You won&#8217;t find this land on any map, the boundaries of this land can be found only in the regions of cultural achievement and heroic artistic labor.</p> <p>More than any other, Yiddish literature carries within itself the kernel of anti-Fascism&#8230;from the beginning, Yiddish literature has depicted the struggle against want and oppression.&#8221;</p> <p>The generation of <em>Yung-Yiddish</em> was also buttressed by the Warsaw avant-garde journals: <em>Chalyastra</em>, edited by Peretz Markish, who spent five years in Poland before returning to Moscow; <em>Albatros</em>, edited by Uri-Zvi Greenberg.  Melech Ravitz, I. J. Singer, and Uri-Zvi Greenberg also belonged to the <em>Chalyastra</em> group.</p> <p>In his series of articles on <em>Yung-Yiddish</em>, Shneiderman also discussed the interest that this group of poets and painters aroused in America when the works of Yankl Adler, Mark Shwartz, Henrik Berlevy, Yitzhak Brauder, and others were shown in New York in the early 1920&#8217;s. Sholem Asch was the first to buy two paintings by Yankl Adler, who later enjoyed international fame.  The poets of<em>Yung-Yiddish</em> formed a close alliance with the American group called the <em>Yunge</em> (Young Ones), especially Moshe-Leib Halpern, Zishe Landau, and Yosef Opatoshu.</p> <p>We lived in Paris from 1933 to 1940. During that time, under the influence of the master of literary reportage, Egon Erwin Kisch, the young poet S. L. Shneiderman began to write prose.   His reports from the Spanish Civil War were published by all the Yiddish newspapers, by<em> Ma&#8217;ariv</em>in Israel, and by four Polish-Yiddish newspapers. A selection of these reports also appeared in book form along with photos taken by my brother, David Szymin (Chim), who was in Spain as a news photographer for French magazines. The book was published in Warsaw in 1938, by the well-known publishing house owned by my father, B. Szymin, while the war in Spain was still going on.</p> <p>Shneiderman&#8217;s first volume of reportages, <em>Zwishn Nalewkes un Eifel-Turm (Between Nalewky and the Eiffel Tower)</em>, appeared in 1935, with a foreword by E. E. Kisch. After the collapse of the Spanish Republic in 1938, Shneiderman was invited for a lecture tour in South Africa; on his way back, he visited Israel for the first time.</p> <p>In my archives, I found a rare document concerning our departure from Paris in the early months of World War II: the February 9, 1940,  issue of the short-lived weekly, <em>Die Voch(The Week)</em>. On the first page, there is a news item reporting that S. L. Shneiderman and B. Frimer have embarked for America on a mission for the Federation of Polish Jews. My hands trembled as I leafed through the four large sheets of yellow and crumbling newspaper which had been published by the Federation of Polish Jews in Paris together with the relief organization for Jewish refugees from Poland, where the Nazi occupation had already sown death and destruction in ghettoes and labor camps. Shneiderman and Schlomo Rosenberg were the editors of the weekly and Shneiderman, accompanied by Frimer &#8212; set off for America to raise money for their enterprise.</p> <p>Those four sheets of newsprint record the tragic moments just before the Holocaust. The Jewish refugees who had managed to escape to Paris were literally barefoot and naked and in need of immediate material aid.</p> <p>First to catch the eye on the front page are the four empty spaces stamped in French, <em>censur</em> (censored) &#8212; which shows how hard France was trying not to provoke Hitler&#8217;s Germany. On the same page there is also a long article by Dr. Heszel Klepfisz, &#8220;The Jews of Poland.&#8221; By then he was already a noted scholar of the history of Eastern European, or Ashkenazi, Jews and had written articles for Orthodox publications in Warsaw. After we left for America, Dr. Klepfisz became the editor of <em>Die Voch</em> and remained in that post until he was drafted into the army. In May, the Germans overran Paris.</p> <p>This issue of <em>Die Voch</em> also contains a heartrending report by Z. Segalowitch, who had just arrived in Paris from Poland. He tells how, when war broke out, in confusion the Jews from the shtetls tried to flee to Warsaw and from Warsaw to the Soviet or Rumanian border. Thronging the roads, the Jews were bombed by German planes and many were killed.</p> <p>A poem by A. Leyeles, &#8220;Lament of the Fields,&#8221; is printed in this newspaper and also a letter from Israel by M. Wolman-Sieraczkowa about a Jewish-Arab &#8220;peace conference,&#8221; which is supposed to demonstrate that relations between Jews and Arabs are improving&#8230; An article by M. Dluznowski about the Federation of Polish Jews in Paris and New York. And next to it &#8212; an enthusiastic review by the art critic, H. Aronson, of a showing of some works by Marc Chagall. Even in the announcements and advertisements, many of them censored, one can feel terror at the approaching disaster. And how ominous an article such as &#8220;Let Us Organize,&#8221; (A. Rosen) or  &#8220;What Is <u>Really</u> Going to Happen to Us Jews?&#8221; (H. Hochbaum) sounds to us today.</p> <p>I am dwelling on this newspaper not only because it touches on our biography, but also because this may be the only extant copy of that short-lived publication and because it is a relic of that tragic moment when the extermination of the European Jews had begun.</p> <p>Arriving in New York after a six-day journey aboard the liner <em>Manhattan</em> and after another week in Ellis Island, we somberly began the process of settling in the new land. Anxiety about the fate of our friends and relatives in Poland and about Shneiderman&#8217;s brother and sister in Paris still plagued us in the free land of America.</p> <p>We lived in America for nearly fifty years, but we frequently traveled to Israel, France, Poland, and other countries in Eastern Europe. In his reports and essays, Shneiderman described the conditions in the dwindling Jewish communities and what they had experienced during the Holocaust.</p> <p>* * *</p> <p>As our archives in New York grew larger and larger, it became necessary to find for an appropriate and permanent place to house our collection of printed works and manuscripts, letters, and unfinished works, along with the rich collection of source materials in many languages. We chose the Institute for Diaspora Research at Tel Aviv University. The head archivist at the Institute, Prof. Joel Raba, gratefully accepted our offer and since 1988, with the help of the Friends of Tel Aviv University in New York, we have been sending him crates of documents, more or less organized.</p> <p>I decided to talk about &#8220;my&#8221; archive some time ago, after a Kol Israel broadcast, in Yiddish, transmitted a rather long interview between Adam Grusman and the writer Yosl Birstein, who had just finished cataloging the archives of Melech Ravitz stored in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. According to Yosl Birstein, it took a full twenty years to prepare the catalog. This, however, does not deter me from what I still intend to accomplish so as to leave my husband&#8217;s legacy in better order for the archivists who will catalog it.</p> <p>And perhaps there will come a young scholar whom these archives will help to understand our epoch, full of grand intellectual achievements and horrible destruction, as it is reflected in the works of this extraordinary writer &#8212; a poet and, as M. Tsanin called him, the first modern journalist in Yiddish literature &#8212; S. L. Shneiderman.</p> <p>Searching through my archives to make a selection of his works for this book, I felt like a deep-sea diver hunting for treasures at the bottom of the ocean&#8230; So I decided, first of all, to include chapters from each of his four books, and as part of my introductory chapter, digests of  some of his long series of reportages which appeared in newspapers in installments but not in book form. Because of the declining market for Yiddish literature, Shneiderman&#8217;s books are now unlikely to be reprinted, so at least these &#8220;samples&#8221; will appear in a new edition. The reader will also find a fairly substantial chapter containing Shneiderman&#8217;s reminiscences, &#8220;Notes for an Autobiography,&#8221; a selection of his poems, and critical essays on writers to whom he was particularly close.</p> <p>The articles about Shneiderman are critical essays by leading Yiddish writers and journalists and as such, enrich the contents of this book. I am grateful for permission to reprint these essays.</p> <p>In conclusion, I must add that without the help and encouragement of my daughter, Helen, her husband, Haim Sarid,  and my son, Ben Shneiderman, and without the love and interest of my five grandchildren, I would not have been able to complete this difficult undertaking.</p> <p>I owe special thanks to Shlomo Shweitzer, writer, editor of the I. L. Peretz Publishing House, and old family friend, for his deep interest in this book, which was published by the Peretz Publishing House in Tel-Aviv.</p> <p>I would also like to thank the writer Zvi Hirsh Smolyakov who prepared the proofs for this book and helped me select the works included here.</p>

<p>Born in Kazimierz, Poland, S. L. Shneiderman began his life in the <em>shtetlech</em> of Eastern Europe. His literary career began in the 1920s with his early poetry and film criticism. His journalistic output in Yiddish and Polish, his articles in English magazines, and his books continued to be published until shortly before his death in 1996. In addition to his published work, he also wrote and helped produce the film <em>The Last Chapter</em>, a documentary that depicts &#8220;The Thousand Year Saga of Polish Jewry,&#8221; in 1966. In 1988, he was honored by family and friends by the publishing of a lithograph, &#8220;Elegy for My Shtetl,&#8221; that includes his 1938 poem of the same name. In her letter to you the reader, Eileen Shneiderman recollected the relationships she and her husband shared with many of the authors in the collection and offers her personal descriptions of several books.</p> <p>Eileen Shneiderman died on December 1, 2005. She published a new Yiddish book in 2001 (I. L. Peretz Publishers, Tel Aviv,), titled <em>What Time is it on the Jewish Clock?</em> It contains a selection of her husband&#8217;s writing, her introduction &#8220;Decades Together,&#8221; and his &#8220;Notes for an Autobiography.&#8221; In November 2001 on the fifth anniversary of S. L. Shneiderman&#8217;s death, his extensive archives were made public at the Diaspora Research Institute of Tel Aviv University.</p> <p>S. L. Shneiderman&#8217;s key book publications in English include:</p> <p><em>The River Remembers</em>, <em>Between Fear and Hope</em>, <em>The Warsaw Heresey</em>, <em>Warsaw Ghetto: A Diary</em>, <em>My Story: Gemma LaGuardia Gluck</em>, and <em>Fiorello&#8217;s Sister Gemma LaGuardia Gluck&#8217;s Story</em>.</p> <p><em>The River Remembers</em>, his reportage about the small Jewish villages of Poland (<em>shtetlakh</em>) that were largely destroyed by the Nazis during World War II. He wrote an early book about post-war Poland, <em>Between Fear and Hope</em>, and a review of the Polish uprising of 1956, <em>The Warsaw Heresy</em>. Mr. Shneiderman also edited Mary Berg&#8217;s <em>Warsaw Ghetto: A Diary</em>, an early important account of the Warsaw Ghetto tragedy as recorded by a young teenager.</p> <p>In March, 2007, two of S. L. Shneiderman&#8217;s books were reprinted in new editions with additional materials. The new edition of <em>The Warsaw Ghetto: A Diary by Mary Berg</em> (1945), was prepared by Susan Lee Pentlin entitled <em>The Diary of Mary Berg: Growing up in the Warsaw Ghetto</em>. The book, <em>My Story</em> (1961), was updated and republished (2007) with a new title, <em>Fiorello&#8217;s Sister: Gemma La Guardia Gluck&#8217;s Story.</em></p> <p>In Yiddish, his earliest books are the collection of poems, <em>Goldene Feigel (Golden Bird)</em> and <em>Feiren in Shtodt (Fires in the City)</em>). The material of his next books came from his years of reporting. <em>Krieg in Spanien (War in Spain)</em> concerned the Spanish Civil War which Mr. Shneiderman reported on from 1936 to 1938. He also published Yiddish editions of <em>Zwishn Shrek un Hofnung (Between Fear and Hope)</em> and <em>Wen di Weisl hot Geredt Yiddish (When the Vistula Spoke Yiddish</em>, the Yiddish version of <em>The River Remembers</em>.) Mr. Shneiderman published books about the artist Arthur Szyk and the journalist and critical thinker Ilya Ehrenburg and edited a collection of original writings in Yiddish entitled <em>Tsuzamen (Together)</em>.</p> <p>Reminiscences of the literary and personal life of S. L. and Eileen Shneiderman were written by their son, Ben Shneiderman, who is a professor at the University of Maryland. Anna Shneiderman, a granddaughter, wrote her recollections: Memories of my Saba.</p>

<p>August 6, 1998</p> <p>Roaming Through my Book-shelves.</p> <p>I want to express my satisfaction at the good care given to my book-collection by the Library of the University of Maryland and for sending me the front-pages of the Yiddish books with dedications of the authors.</p> <p>In a way, the browsing through the mass of the xeroxes are a journey through years of my life. I knew many of the authors who offered the books to my late husband, Samuel L. Shneiderman, and many of them were our good friends. That is why I will write about them rather in a personal vein and stress those who played an important role in the Yiddish literature of the 20th century. Most of them did not survive the Holocaust, but their books did survive&#8230;</p> <p>I will start with the writers who grew up with Shneiderman in his hometown Kazimierz Dolny and the neighboring <em>shtetlech</em> and towns around Lublin.</p> <p>The first who comes to mind is Shlomo Rozenberg who in the early 20&#8217;s became known for his masterly Yiddish translation of the book <em>The Peasants</em> by the Polish writer W. Rejmont, the Nobel Prize laureate in 1924. Rozenberg was later a secretary of Sholem Asch and an author of popular novels about Biblical heroes in Jewish history. He was appreciated for his style and for enriching the Yiddish language.</p> <p>The other close friend of Shneiderman was the poet J. Papiernikov who emigrated to Palestine and was—in Shneiderman&#8217;s words—&#8221;a builder and a singer of Eretz Israel&#8221; but also a fighter for the rights of Yiddish after the establishment of the State of Israel when the official policy was the introduction of Hebrew and the elimination of Yiddish as a remnant of the Diaspora or <em>galut</em>. Papiernikov published 18 poetry books. Many of his poems became popular almost as folk-songs with his own music. He died in Israel at the age of 92. I am tempted to quote one of his poems in the original.</p> <p>In the Shneidermans&#8217; book collection there are a number of works by Yiddish writers in Paris in the 30s, where we lived till our departure for New-York, in February 1940. Most of them are novels describing the struggle of the Jewish emigrants from Poland and other countries in East Europe. Among them was B. Shlevin, R. Kope, A. Waldman and his wife M. Ram-Waldman, Lily Berger and M. Litvin the critic and translator of French poetry into Yiddhish and Yiddish poetry into French.</p> <p>Whenever in Paris we used to meet the poet Moshe Shulstein, born in Lublin, who was a dear friend of Shneiderman. We used to sit with him and his wife Milka in a cafe and talked into late hours.</p> <p>You have a book by B. Yeushson, <em>From our old Sources</em>. Shneiderman admired the efforts of this Yiddish journalist from Warsaw in providing in Yiddish a popular source of rabbinic literature.</p> <p>Shimon Apter, the author of short stories and historical novels was the secretary of the Yiddish PEN Club, when Shneiderman was the President during the 70s. His best novel was <em>The Maranos Family de Silva</em>, published in 1982. He was a good friend and used to join us for the International PEN Congresses.</p> <p>An important place in Yiddish literature belongs to Nachman Meisel, a critic and editor of the foremost weekly <em>Literarishe Bletter</em> published in Warsaw in the 20s and 30s where Shneiderman&#8217;s poems and articles appeared after he came to Warsaw in 1925. Nachman Meisel knew my father, the pioneer-publisher of Yiddish and Hebrew books, Benjamin Shimin, and I remember him since my childhood. In the dedication in his book of essays in 1962 Meisel wrote: &#8220;To my good friends S. L. Shneiderman and Halina Shimin&#8230;&#8221; His archives are now in Kibbutz Alonim in Israel where he lived the last years before his death. His most important work was devoted to Mendele Mocher Sforim (S. I. Abramovitch), the classic of modern Yiddish literature.</p> <p>During his stay in Johannesburg in 1938 Shneiderman befriended two brothers, the writers Leibl and Rachmiel Feldman—authors of books about the Jewish community in South Africa, that are now in the Library of the University of Maryland.</p> <p>M. Weisenberg (1878-1938) [was] a powerful novelist [whose books described the] life of Jews in Poland. In our book-collection you will the book of his daughter, Perl Weisenberg Axelrod, about her father&#8217;s life and work, published in Montreal, Canada in 1986. During the seven long years while working on this important book, she came several times to New York to ask Shneiderman&#8217;s advice. We had great respect for her difficult undertaking.</p> <p>There is in our book-collection an important book by Hilel Zeitlin about Nachman Braslaver, the &#8220;Seer of Podole&#8221;, the thinker and mystic who lived in Ukraine one hundred years after the Baal-Shem-Tov, the founder of the Hassidic movement. The Braslever journeyed to Eretz Israel in 1798 and left a detailed account of his experiences. Hilel Zeitlin perished in the Warsaw Ghetto. The book about the Braslaver was published in New York as the first volume of his collected works.</p> <p>Michal Weichert was a theater director in pre-war Poland. During the war he was in charge of an underground self-help organization in Cracow, that distributed medication sent from the American Joint Distribution Committee to the Jews in the ghettos. After the war he was accused of collaborating with the Nazis, because sometimes he had to bribe them by sharing some of the medical help received from abroad. He wrote four volumes of memoirs in which he tried to clear his name. Shneiderman openly defended him.</p> <p>Dr. Chaim Shoshkes was our good friend, who in the beginning of the Nazi occupation escaped from the Warsaw-Ghetto and arrived through London to New York. From him I got the last news about my parents who later perished in August 1942. Shoshkes was a writer, perennial traveler through the Jewish communities, particularly in the Middle East. When we visited him in the hospital, he took his big briefcase and handing it to Shneiderman said in a weak voice: &#8220;I cannot travel any more. Take it and continue the journeys through the Yiddish-Land&#8230;&#8221; He died a few days later. He left close to twenty Yiddish volumes that were very popular among Yiddish readers.</p> <p><em>From Both Sides of the Ghetto Wall</em> by Wladka was the first document to reach New York by an active member of the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance Organization. Wladka—Geigele Peltel Miedzyrzecki—was a liaison woman who kept contact with the so called Arian side, smuggling in weapons and providing shelter for children on the other side of the ghetto wall. Her husband, Benjamin Mead, is the leader of the Survivors&#8217; Organization in the U.S. that played an active role in the movement for the Holocaust Museum in Washington.</p> <p>Dr. M. Dworzecki was a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp in Estonia. He published works about Nazi doctors and their gruesome experiments on Jewish inmates, from the viewpoint of a medical doctor.</p> <p>In our book collection, there are works by prominent literary critics whom we knew in New York: Dr. A. Mukdoini&#8217;s book <em>I. L. Peretz and the Yiddish Theater</em> (1949); Sh. Niger&#8217;s <em>Israel: Nation and Land</em>; A. Tabatchnik&#8217;s important book about the poet Zishe Landau (1941) and a book <em>Poets and Poetry</em> (1965); and a book of essays by Abraham Lis, <em>Conversations in Writing</em> (1985).</p> <p>Abraham Lis belonged, together with Shneiderman, to the group of young Yiddish writers in the early 30&#8217;s who identified themselves as the leftist zionists (Linke Poalei Zion). He was born and grew up in the city of Bialystok, an important center of modem Yiddish culture. In 1936 Lis, at the age of 22 came to Israel and started his career as a writer of literary essays. When Shneiderman came for the first time to Israel in the winter of 1939, he met his old friends—Lis and Papiernikov, and they accompanied him on his lecture tour about the Spanish Civil War. I have found in our archives a photo of the three of them with a dedication: &#8220;To Shneiderman, at his departure from Eretz Israel—I. Papiernikov and A. Lis.&#8221; A. Lis became one of the founders of the &#8220;I. L. Peretz Farlag&#8221; that is still publishing books by Yiddish writers from all over the world. Later, when the Beth Sholem Aleichem was established, Lis became the Director of this institution and under his leadership the &#8220;Sholem Aleichem House&#8221; became a depository of the archive of the great Yiddish writer. A beautiful permanent exhibition is being visited by Israelis and tourists. In 1995 Beth Sholem Aleichem Pollak Prize was awarded to S. L. Shneiderman. In the name of the jury Lis presented a moving anaylsis of Shneiderman&#8217;s contribution to Yiddish literature as poet, essayist, author of literary reportage and journalist. I personally owe him my gratitude for his encouragement in my efforts to keep alive the memory of my late husband.</p> <p>Chaim Bez was a prominent Yiddish educator and author of text books on Yiddish literature for Yiddish schools and seminars, among them—<em>Writers and (their) Works</em> and <em>A Journey through the Yiddish Literature</em> that you can find in our book-collection. We knew Chaim Bez for many years in New York.</p> <p>When in London our first call was to A. N. Shtenzl, the lonely one man publisher, editor and poet of the Yiddish weekly and later monthly small size magazine—the only, and probably the last Yiddish periodical in London. He was a pathetic figure, a dreamer, a remnant of a pre-war colony of Jewish emigrants from Eastern Europe. Here you have his book published in London in 1961 <em>Weitchepel Shtetl in Britten</em>.</p> <p>Dr. Izhak Levin, a son of a prominent Rabbi, was a researcher and writer about the history of Polish Jewry. He belonged also to the United Nations Non-Governmental Representatives as a delegate from the Federation of Polish Jews. A good friend of Shneiderman, he used to inform him of important UN debates concerning Jewish problems. Our collection includes one of his many works about <em>Jews in Old Poland—Historical Essays</em>.</p> <p>Izhak Luden is a publicist, editor of the Yiddish periodical in Israel <em>Lebens Fragen (Life&#8217;s Problems)</em>. He is a leader of the international Social-democratic &#8220;Bund&#8221; movement that is celebrating its hundred year anniversary since its inception in 1898. His book <em>Fun Cholem biz Sholem (From Dream to Peace)</em> is devoted to the successful negotiations between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and the President of Israel, Menachem Begin.</p> <p>Brat is the editor of the Yiddish weekly <em>Letzte Neies</em>, appearing previously as a daily for many years. Brat is known as the author of humoristic stories and it is difficult to translate the title of his book <em>Aropgelaht fun Harzi</em>, maybe &#8220;Confessions in Laughter&#8221;&#8230;</p> <p>Our closest friends through the decades of our life in New-York were A. Almi, Jacob Glatstein and Meir Shtiker—none of them alive any more. Their works represent the high level reached by Yiddish poetry in the United States.</p> <p>A. Almi—A close friend, a kind man, a wonderful free spirit. Born to a family in the poor neighborhood of Warsaw, he spent his youth among porters, horse-and-wagon drivers (<em>balagoles</em>), thieves and street-singers, begging with their improvised songs, who found in young Almi an admirer who even wrote songs for them. As a youngster he brought his first poems to I. L. Peretz on Ceglana Street—at the time a popular address in Warsaw for young poets and writers. Peretz encouraged Almi and also helped him to get an education.</p> <p>In the introduction to a book of A. Almi&#8217;s poems with a Hebrew translation, S. L. Shneiderman stressed that it was a miracle that being brought in the nest of poverty and underworld, he grew up to become a highly refined poet and essayist. Besides poems he wrote philosophical essays about Spinoza (he was a member of the Spinoza Society) and Buddhism, as well as articles in the Yiddish newspapers and periodicals. Particularly close to him was the <em>Freie Arbeter Stime</em>, an organ of the anarchist movement, where he fought his battles against all the injustices of the moment. His poems about the Holocaust published in 1943 belong to the strongest in the memorial literature. Born in 1892, Almi died in New York by committing suicide in the 60s after suffering many years of insomnia. His death was a deep shock to us.</p> <p>Jacob Glatstein, as I remember him, was a man whose very presence created a mood of celebration. He was always open and friendly, ready to start a lively conversation, or to encourage a younger writer.</p> <p>Born in the Polish city of Lublin at the end of the 19th century to a family of an owner of a modest clothing-store, Glatstein always remained close to the traditions of this city that played an important role in the cultural developments of its Polish and Jewish inhabitants. In the 17th and 18th centuries Lublin was the seat of the <em>Vaad Arba Arzot</em>, the parliament of the Jewish Kehilot. In the early Renaissance Lublin was a center of Polish culture and was compared to Florence. Glatstein who immigrated to New-York in 1914, just before the outbreak of the First World War, managed to get a college education and even wrote poems in English. But soon he realized that the Yiddish of Lublin is for him the natural language of expression.</p> <p>As a student in the Law School at New York University, he belonged to the founders of the <em>In Sich</em> introspectivist avant-garde movement that rejected the traditional forms of Yiddish poetry. A similar revolution was taking place in American English poetry and Glatstein admired Walt Whitman. In his poetry in free verse and surrealistic symbolism you could hear the &#8220;American rhythm.&#8221; The other prominent members of the <em>Insichist</em> movement were A. Glanz-Leyeles and N. Minkoff.</p> <p>Besides writing poetry, Glatstein became a prolific publicist, journalist, literary critic and editor. There was a rare friendship and mutual understanding between Glatstein and Shneiderman. They admired each other and we spent many evenings together at our home.</p> <p>With all his sophistication Glatstein remained the &#8220;Jew from Lublin.&#8221; In his poems you can read the history of our tragic century. After the <em>Kristallnight</em> (sic) in Germany in 1938 Glatstein wrote his poem &#8220;Good Night World&#8221; that begins with the lines: &#8220;Good night, wide world,/ big stinking world./ Not you but I slam shut the gate./ With a long gabardine,/ with a fiery yellow patch,/ with a proud stride,/ because I want to,/ I am going back to the ghetto&#8221; (trans. by Ruth Whitman).</p> <p>The set of poems about Israel begins with an original scene at the airport. When the passport comptroller asks where he comes from: &#8220;<em>Fun wanen kumt a Yid</em>?&#8221; His answer is: &#8220;<em>Jeder yid&#8217;s funwanen/ Is fundanan</em>&#8221; (Every Jew&#8217;s &#8220;from where&#8221; is &#8220;from here&#8221;).</p> <p>After his trip back to Lublin he wrote many poems and essays in which he identifies himself with the historical Jewish town of his childhood and recalls with love his parents. This theme permeates his later writings. The 75th birthday of Jacob Glatstein was celebrated with sincere admiration by the shrinking community of Yiddish writers and readers in New York. There were banquets and literary evenings for Glatstein and his wife Fanny, in which be responded with his usual humor and friendly disposition.</p> <p>It was a deep shock for everybody when Glatstein suddenly died, just after the celebrations of his 75^th Birthday, at the highest point of his creativity. He left 23 volumes of poetry, novels and literary and political essays. Many of his works were translated in other languages.</p> <p>Abraham Sutskever is considered to be the greatest Yiddish poet of our generation. Born in 1913 he started to write poetry as a young man and since the establishment of the Jewish Scientific Institute, or &#8220;YIVO,&#8221; in Wilno, he was involved in its activities. At the outbreak of World War Two the young Sutskever lived through the horrors of the ghetto before he joined a partisan-group in the Noritch-forests around Wilno. He managed to save an important part of the archives of YIVO, as well as his poems written in the ghetto, that reached Moscow, where they were received with great interest in the Yiddish literary circles and the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. Thanks to the intervention of Ilya Erenburg, Sutskever was brought to Moscow. In 1946 he appeared at the Nuremberg Trials as a witness for the Soviet prosecution against the Nazi war-crimes. Soon after, he left with his wife Freide on what was seen by the British as an illegal voyage of the S.S. Patria, and eventually reached Israel.</p> <p>During our frequent trips to Israel the first visit was always to Sutskever. He still lives in the same apartment in the center of Tel-Aviv. The apartment was full of books and paintings among them works of his daughter, a talented painter. There were talks about poetry, exchange of experiences in an atmosphere of mutual understanding that was stimulating to both of us. Sutskever and Shneiderman were admirers of Polish poetry, particularly of Julian Tuwim. In one of his books of poems in our collection Sutskever wrote in his dedication: &#8220;To Hala and S. L. Shneiderman—with wishes for many poetic Years of our friendship&#8221; (<em>Oif lange chawerishe poetishe yorn</em>). Another book has the dedication: &#8220;To my dear friend, the writer S. L. Shneiderman who deeply loves good poetry&#8221;.</p> <p>In a letter, dated Nov. 3, 1964, Sutskever wrote: &#8220;Dear friend Shneiderman: I am late to tell you, that it was good to meet you in New York and to walk with you up and down through the UN countries. But what made me write this letter, is your essay about Julian Tuwim in <em>Yiddisher Kemfer</em>. It is a wonderful essay. Warm, convincing, sincere, with a moving friendship and love to his poetry. It belongs to the best essays that I have read in the last years. Through this essay you became still closer to me&#8221;.</p> <p>A. Sutskever was the founder and editor of the prestigious literary Magazine <em>Di Goldene Keit(The Golden Chain)</em> where some of Shneiderman&#8217;s articles were published. In a letter dated 20th of July, 1969, Sutskever wrote: &#8220;Dear Sheniderman, your &#8216;The Last Jew in Kuzmir&#8217; is already in print. It is a very moving and well written piece. When you will merzishem (with gods will) arrive—you will be able to read the galley proofs. It will appear in the 67th issue. At the same time we will have a good talk about everything. Greetings to your wife, daughter and son-in-law&#8221;.</p> <p>When in Tel-Aviv, Shneiderman also used to meet Sutskever every Friday morning in Cafe Exodus where Sutskever liked to meet people and even to write his poems. In later years the contact was kept mostly by telephone, as often as health permitted.</p> <p>Now, when Yiddish-lovers are celebrating the 85th Birthday of Avram Sutskever and rereading his poems, we again admire his masterly reaching to the deepest sources of the Yiddish language and reflecting the pain and hopes of our generation.</p>