David Pinski and Israel
 

Pinski, the ardent Zionist, immigrated to Israel in 1949 where he lived in Haifa. He was active and productive, writing many plays and essays until he suffered a paralyzing stroke in the summer of 1956. He remained an invalid from then until his death on 11 August 1959. He will always be remembered when the greats of Yiddish literature are discussed.

Abraham Sutzkever, pictured below, center, born in 1913 in Smorgon, Poland (now Smarhon, Belarus), was a Yiddish poet who also acted as a partisan during World War II and the Holocaust. The activities of World War I compelled his family to flee to Siberia. Subsequently, in 1922, Sutzkever moved to Vilnius (then Wilno, Poland), where he attended cheder and also gymnasium (high school.) In the early 1930s, Sutzkever became a writer within the "Young Vilna" group and first published a poem in a literary journal in 1934. When the Nazis occupied Vilnius in the summer of '41, Sutzkever, along with many others, was forced to live in the ghetto of Vilnius. Fortunately, in September 1943, Sutzkever was able to escape into the forest where he joined together with and fought with the partisans against the Nazi occupiers. Sutzkever was able to save many of his manuscripts and published many of his poems after the war. During this time he lived in Moscow, Lodz, finally emigrating to Israel, as did David Pinski. He now lives in Tel Aviv. Abraham Sutzkever was once the editor of "Di Goldene Keyt," a Yiddish literary publication in Israel.