Sunday, 3 May 2015

VILI (WILLIE) GOTLIB

VILI (WILLIE) GOTLIB (b. 1908)
           He was born in Lodz into a well-to-do merchant family.  He received a Jewish and a general education.  Until WWII, he was a businessman and manufacturer in Lodz.  He was devoted friend and patron of Jewish culture and art.  He was the author of the book Dos vort fun dortn (The word from there) (Lodz, 1939), 93 pp., with drawings by H. Bartshinski.  This book—among the last published Yiddish books in Poland prior to WWII—was an apocalyptic poem in thirteen chapters, in which the author painted with poetic colors and images (and with strong language) Jewish sufferings under the coming of Nazism to the countries that it would occupy in the war, and Hitler’s bleak end.  During the German occupation of Lodz, he escaped to Bialystok.  He later returned illegally to Poland and died there.


Source: Kh. L. Fuks, in Fun noentn over 3 (New York, 1957).

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