GERSHON-PEYSEKH VAYLAND

GERSHON-PEYSEKH VAYLAND (1869-1942)

            He was born in Vohin (Wohyń), Lublin district, Poland.  He was raised in a religious environment.  At age fourteen he was orphaned on both sides, left his town, and was an apprentice in Warsaw to a sign painter.  On Sabbaths and holidays, he remained in the workshop, studying and reading.  His first poems were published in November 1937 in the journal Shriftn (Writings) in Warsaw.  In book form: Ershte krayz (First circle), sonnets (Warsaw, 1938), 19 pp.; Shikzal un shpil, sonetn un strofn (Destiny and play, sonnets and verses) (Warsaw, 1939), 29 pp.  When the Nazis invaded Warsaw, Vayland was confined to the ghetto and suffered greatly from want.  In the archives of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, there is a letter of his (dated February 27, 1942) pleading to a Jewish aide institution in the Warsaw Ghetto: “I lay this letter of request in your hands.  I am a Jewish poet, and every day when I wash my body—just skin and bones, the flesh all completely gone, no Mother to care for me—I think that I am no longer affected by death.”  In early September 1942, during the great selection, he with a three-month-old baby in his hands, went to his death.

Sources: Hemshekh (New York) 3 (1942); “Yizker” (Prayer of remembrance for the death), Yidishe shriftn anthology (Lodz, 1946); B. Goldshteyn, Finf yor in varshever geto (Five years on the Warsaw Ghetto) (New York, 1947), p. 286; B. Mark, Umgekumene shrayber fun di getos un lagern (Murdered writers from the ghettos and camps) (Warsaw, 1954), pp. 52, 59.

Zaynvl Diamant