AVROM-PINKHES TSIKERT

AVROM-PINKHES TSIKERT (b. 1926)

            He was born in Lodz, Poland, into a Hassidic family.  Until 1939 he attended religious elementary school and yeshiva, and he had private tutors.  At age fourteen he was confined in the Lodz ghetto.  At that time he was already writing poetry which attracted the attention of the poetess Miriam Ulyanover.  She brought him into her underground writers’ circle, and thanks to her Tsikert was saved.  In 1933 with the last transport of Lodz Jews, he was deported to Auschwitz, where he survived the war and was liberated.  He spent the years 1945-1948 in a sanatorium in Switzerland and later settled in Melbourne.  He began publishing poems, stories, and depictions of the Lodz ghetto and concentration camp in: Loshn un lebn (Language and life) in London (1946); later, contributing to Teater-shpigl (Theater mirror) and Di tsayt (The times) in London, Unzer vort (Our word) in Paris, Tsukunft (Future) in New York, and Keneder odler (Canadian eagle) in Montreal.  From 1948 he published in: Oystralishe yidishe nayes (Australian Jewish news), Di yidishe post (The Jewish mail), and Yidishe nayes (Jewish news), among other serials, in Melbourne.  From 1964 he was a regular contributor to Der landsman (The compatriot) in Melbourne, in which he placed poetry.  A number of his poems written in the Lodz ghetto under the pen name Nokhum Tsharnovski or unsigned were included in the anthology Dos lid fun geto (The poem from the ghetto) (Warsaw, 1962).  From 1976, he was living in Jerusalem.

Sources: Z. Diamant, in Unzer vort (Paris) (April 22, 1948); Ruta Pups, Dos lid fun geto, zamlung (The poem from the ghetto, anthology) (Warsaw, 1962), see index; H. Bergner, in Pinkes (New York) (1965), p. 290; Biblyografye fun artiklen vegn khurbn un gvure in yidisher peryodike (Bibliography of articles on the catastrophe and heroism in Yiddish periodicals) (New York: Yad Vashem and YIVO, 1966), see index; information from Yerakhmiel Briks, New York.

Khayim Leyb Fuks

[Additional information from: Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 466.]