Shmerke Kaczerginski, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Shmerke Kaczerginski

Polish poet

Date of Birth: 28-Oct-1908

Place of Birth: Vilnius, Vilnius County, Lithuania

Date of Death: 23-Apr-1954

Profession: writer, poet

Nationality: Poland, Argentina

Zodiac Sign: Scorpio


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About Shmerke Kaczerginski

  • Shmaryahu "Shmerke" Kaczerginski (Yiddish: ?????? ???????????????; 28 October 1908 – 23 April 1954) was a Yiddish-speaking poet, musician, writer and cultural activist.
  • Born to a poor family in Vilna and orphaned at a young age, Kaczerginski was educated at the local Talmud Torah and night school, where he became involved in communist politics and was regularly beaten or imprisoned. At the age of 15 he began publishing original songs and poetry, including Tates, mames, kinderlekh ("Fathers, mothers, children"), and soon began organising Yung Vilne, a secular Jewish writing collective whose other members included Abraham Sutzkever and Chaim Grade.
  • The Nazi invasion of Poland led to Kaczerginski's eventual imprisonment in the Vilna Ghetto, where he helped hide Jewish cultural works with Sutzkever as part of the Paper Brigade and joined the United Partisans Organisation, participating in the failed Vilna Ghetto uprising and then escaping to the forest to fight with both the partisans and the Soviets. After the recapture of Vilna, Kaczerginski returned home to recover the hidden cultural works and founded the first post-Holocaust Jewish museum in Europe; he quickly became disenchanted with the Soviets and communism and developed into an ardent Zionist.
  • After some time in Lódz, he moved to Paris before eventually relocating to Buenos Aires, where he was killed in a plane crash at the age of 45. Renowned during his lifetime as a poet and writer, Kaczerginski dedicated much of his time after the start of the Second World War to collecting pre-war Yiddish songs and songs of the Holocaust in order to save Yiddishkeit from destruction.
  • The author, editor or publisher of most of the first post-Holocaust songbooks, Kaczerginski was responsible for preserving over 250 Holocaust songs – the majority of those still known.
  • Despite the enduring popularity of many of his own works, and the importance of his labours to researchers and Yiddish cultural activists, his early death has led to his relative anonymity.

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