LEYB
GLITSMAN (1904-1941)
He was born in Pumpian (Pumpenai), near Ponevezh, Lithuania, into a family
of means. He received a general and a
Jewish education. He studied in a
Russian public school, later graduating from the Jewish senior high school in
Vilkomir (Ukmerge). He studied the
humanistic sciences and literature at Kovno University. From 1922 he was a Yiddish and Hebrew teacher
as well as a cultural leader in Pumpian, Linkuva, and Ponevezh. From 1938 until June 1941, he was living in
Kovno, working as a teacher in a Yiddish-Hebrew middle school. In his high school years, he began to write
lyrical and nature poetry, and he first published in the anthology Vispe (Islet) 2 (Kovno, 1922). He contributed poems to Vispe 3 (Kovno, 1923), Kveytn
(Blossoms), Brikn (Bridges), Shlakhn (Combat), Idishe shtime (Jewish voice), and Folksblkat (People’s newspaper) in Kovno, Yidishe bilder (Jewish images) in Riga, and to virtually all of the
other literary publication in Lithuania.
His poems of mood and sadness exerted an influence both by virtue of
their immediacy and by virtue of finely polished Yiddish, and they were thus seen
by the critics. At the time of the
German assault on Russia on June 22, 1941, he left Kovno with his family for
Vilna. There are two versions of the
story of his death: (a) he escaped from Vilna to the former Soviet border and
died from German bombing en route; and (b) he returned to Kovno, and from there
made his way to relatives in Ponevezh, where he was killed during a German
campaign in the first days of September 1941.
Sources: Y. Mark, in Zamlbukh, lekoved dem tsvey hundert un fuftsikstn
yoyvl fun der yidisher prese 1686-1936 (Anthology in honor of the 250th
jubilee of the Yiddish press, 1686-1936) (New York, 1937);
N. Y. Gotlib, in Lite (Lithuania)
(New York, 1951), p. 1101; Keneder odler
(Montreal) (April 10, 1944); oral information from his cousin A. Bard in New
York.
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