SHOLEM ZHIRMAN

SHOLEM ZHIRMAN (1909-1941)

            He was a poet, born in Vilna. He worked in carpentry in his father’s workshop. From his early youth, he was active in the revolutionary movement and was on several occasions jailed. He debuted in print with poems in Literarishe tribune (Literary tribune) in Warsaw (1930-1932). Over the years 1933-1939, he was confined in a Polish concentration camp, Kartuz-Bereza, from which he left deaf and sick with tuberculosis. He later published reportage pieces, poetry, and depictions of his six years in Kartuz-Bereza for Byalistoker shtern (Bialystok star), Shtraln (Beams [of light]) in Kovno, Vilner emes (Vilna truth) in 1940, Yidishe kultur (Jewish culture) in New York, and others. In 1940, after Lithuania became a Soviet Republic, he was embraced as a member of the writers’ association of the Soviet Union. The Moscow publisher “Der emes” (The truth) brought out a poetry collection of his, Durkh grates, lider (Through bars, poems), 48 pp. When WWII broke out, he did not succeed in evacuating. Together with his wife, Yadviga Ostrovska, and a group of friends, he set out for the woods to link up with the partisans, but they fell into the hands of the Gestapo. He died in Ponary, near Vilna, in late 1941.

Sources: A. Pomerants, Tserisene keytn (Broken chains) (New York, 1943), pp. 60-64; Yidishe kultur (New York) (June-July 1944); Sh. Katsherginski, in Khurbn vilne (The Holocaust in Vilna) (New York, 1947), pp. 193-94; D. Sfard, in Yidishe shriftn (Warsaw) 3 (59) (1952); Sh. Aleksander, in Ikuf-bleter (Bucharest) (1952); B Mark, Umgekumene shrayber fun di getos un lagern (Murders writers from the ghettos and camps) (Warsaw, 1954), p. 217; Sh. Belis, in Folksshtime (Warsaw) (September 20, 1958).

Benyomen Elis

[Additional information from: Chaim Beider, Leksikon fun yidishe shrayber in ratn-farband (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers in the Soviet Union), ed. Boris Sandler and Gennady Estraikh (New York: Congress for Jewish Culture, Inc., 2011), p. 155.]