MORTKHE-MENDL GRINVALD

MORTKHE-MENDL GRINVALD (1916-1944)

            He was born in Lodz, Poland, into a poor laboring household.  He graduated from a Polish public school.  He lived in Lodz until WWII, where he was active among Bundist youth in Geyer’s district.  He began writing humorous and satirical poems in the humor section of Nayes folksblat (New people’s newspaper) in Lodz.  Over the years 1935-1938, he was a member (along with Fishl Flakser, Yoysef Gershberg, Yosl Vodnik, and Hersh Gliksberg of Zduńska Wola) of the Lodz youth poetry group that assembled around the journal Tsvaygn (Branches) in Lodz (1938).  He contributed to Grine bleter (Green leaves) (Lodz, 1939).  He was in the Lodz ghetto, where he suffered from hunger and illnesses, and continued to write a great deal.  He was well-known for his satirical poems about the ghetto rulers.  Several of them were published in the illegal collection Geto-shriftn (Ghetto writings), edited by Alter Shnur.  He died of hunger in the Lodz ghetto in the summer of 1944.

Sources: A. Ayzenbakh, in Yidishe shriftn (Yiddish writings), vol. 2 (Lodz, 1948); B. Mark, Umgekumene shrayber fun di getos un lagern (Murdered writers from the ghettos and camps) (Warsaw, 1954); Kh. L. Fuks, in Fun noentn over 3 (New York, 1957).