Jewish Partisans Memorials in Bat-Yam, Israel

Hirsch Glick (1922 in

Wilno Vilnius ( , ; see also #Etymology and other names, other names) is the capital and List of cities in Lithuania#Cities, largest city of Lithuania, with a population of 592,389 (according to the state register) or 625,107 (according to the munic ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...

– 1944 in Estonia) was a

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

poet and partisan. Glick was born in

in 1922 (at the time a part of inter-war Poland). He began to write

Yiddish Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ve ...

poetry in his teens and became co-founder of '' Yungvald'' (Young Forest), a group of young Jewish poets. After the German assault on the Soviet Union in 1941, Hirsh Glick was imprisoned in the Weiße Wache

concentration camp Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simpl ...

and later transferred to the

Vilna Ghetto The Vilna Ghetto was a World War II Jewish ghetto established and operated by Nazi Germany in the city of Vilnius in the modern country of Lithuania, at the time part of the Nazi-administered Reichskommissariat Ostland. During the approximat ...

. Glick involved himself in the ghetto's artistic community while simultaneously participating in the underground and took part in the 1942 ghetto uprising. In 1943 he wrote his most famous work, the song '' Zog nit keynmol, az du geyst dem letstn veg'' (זאג ניט קיינמאל, אז דו גייסט דעם לעצטן וועג) to the music of Dmitry Pokrass (1899-1978), which became the anthem of the Jewish partisan movement, and '' Shtil, di nakht iz oysgeshternt''. He was inspired to write this work by news that arrived of the

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; pl, powstanie w getcie warszawskim; german: link=no, Aufstand im Warschauer Ghetto was the 1943 act of Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto in German-occupied Poland during World War II to oppose Nazi Germany' ...

. Glick managed to flee when the Vilna Ghetto was being liquidated in October 1943, but got captured. Later he was deported to a

Estonia Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, a ...

. During his captivity he continued to compose songs and poems. In July 1944, with the

Soviet Army uk, Радянська армія , image = File:Communist star with golden border and red rims.svg , alt = , caption = Emblem of the Soviet Army , start_date ...

approaching, Glick escaped. He was never heard from again, and was presumed captured and executed by the

Nazis Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in N ...

(reportedly in August 1944).

Sources

*Gutman, Israel, ed. ''Encyclopedia of the Holocaust''. MacMillan Reference Books, 1995.

References

External links

* Free song lyrics in Yiddish and sheet music by Hirsh Glick http://ulrich-greve.eu/free/others.html {{DEFAULTSORT:Glick, Hirsh 1922 births 1944 deaths Writers from Vilnius Lithuanian Jews Jewish partisans Jewish poets Yiddish-language poets Vilna Ghetto inmates World War II poets Lithuanian people executed by Nazi Germany Escapees from German detention