MOYSHE SANEK

MOYSHE SANEK (1912-1970)

            He was born in Lodz, Poland.  He studied in religious elementary school and public school, and later he became a craftsman.  He lived in Lodz until 1939.  From 1933 he published poetry in: Nayer folksblat (New people’s newspaper), Grine bleter (Green leaves), and Inzl (Island), among others, in Lodz.  He was also a member of a dramatic theatrical studio, for which he wrote topical scenarios and monologues.  During the period of Nazi rule, he was confined in the Lodz ghetto and worked in the disinfection division, while at the same time remaining active in the writers’ group around Miriam Ulinover and in Yiddish theater in the ghetto, for which he wrote songs and sketches which were staged.  In late August 1944, at the time of the liquidation of the ghetto, he was sent to Auschwitz.  In the winter of 1945 he endured the death march through Germany, then was placed in the death camp of Bergen-Belsen, where he was rescued with the sudden arrival of the British army.  He was laid up in a hospital for a time, later active organizing Holocaust survivors in the British zone.  He was a member of the organizing committee of a survivors’ congress which met September 25-27, 1945.  He was a member of the central committee of the Zionist Iḥud (Unity) in the German camps.  He participated in Yiddish “concentration camp theater” in Bergen-Belsen [after the war].  He contributed poetry and feature pieces to Undzer shtime (Our voice) in Bergen-Belsen (1945-1947), in which he published the poem “Un vos vayter, yid bafrayter?” (Now what, liberated Jew?).  He also contributed to the literary anthology Tsoytn (Tufts of hair) (Bergen-Belsen, 1947) and other literary publications in the survivors’ camps in Germany.  He lived for a time in Hannover, West Germany.  He died in Bnei Brak.

Sources: Y. Shpigl, in Dos naye lebn (Lodz) (August 5, 1946); B. Mark, Umgekumene shrayber fun di getos un lagern (Murdered writers from the ghettos and camps) (Warsaw, 1954), p. 161; B. Kosovski, Biblyografye fun di yidishe oysgabes in der britisher zone fun daytshland, 1945-1950 (Bibliography of Yiddish publications in the British zone in Germany, 1945-1950) (Bergen Belsen, 1950), see index; information from Sh. T. in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Khayim Leyb Fuks