Rachmil Bryks | |
|---|---|
| Born | Rachmil Leib Bryks 18 April 1912 Skarżysko-Kamienna, Skarżysko County, Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship, Poland |
| Died | October 2, 1974 (aged 62) New York City, U.S. |
| Occupation | Writer, Poet |
| Language | Yiddish |
| Genre | Novels, Novellas, short stories, poems |
Rachmil Leib Bryks (April 18, 1912 - October 2, 1974) (Yiddish and Hebrew: ירחמיאל בריקס) was a Yiddish author and poet known for his writings based on his own experiences as a young Jewish man under the Nazis during World War II. He wrote five books about the Holocaust period, in Sweden and in the United States after his liberation from the Łódź Ghetto and the Nazi camps, including Auschwitz.
Throughout his four years in the Łódź Ghetto (May 1940 – August 1944), he had sat in the evenings after a hard day's work and had written by hand many pages of poetry and prose, describing the hunger, pain, and anguish that the Jewish people were enduring. He was a member of an underground group of Yiddish Writers which met at Miriam Ulinover's home in the Lodz Ghetto, each reading to her his poetry and awaiting her comments. Realizing their historic importance, Bryks had buried his papers underground within the ghetto borders before he was deported to Auschwitz on August 24, 1944.
Bryks's best known works[1] include A Cat in the Ghetto[2][3][4] (Yiddish: אַ קאַץ אין געטאָ; Hebrew: חתול בגטו) which was translated to English and Hebrew, and Ghetto Factory 76[5][6] (Chemical waste conversion) (Yiddish: געטאָ־פֿאַבריק 76 (״כעמישע אָפּפֿאַל־פֿערװערטונג״)) which was dramatized as Resort 76[7] by Shimon Wincelberg.