About
About The Author
Rachmil Leib Bryks (ירחמיאל ליאב בריקס) was born in Skarżysko-Kamienna, Poland on April 18, 1912. He 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.
Rachmil Bryks became well-known in the second half of the twentieth century as a Yiddish writer who, based on his own experiences, described the Jewish people’s torment and suffering under the Nazis during World War II with tragic humor . The bulk of his writing, his five books about the Holocaust period, was written in Sweden and in the United States after his liberation from the Lodz Ghetto and the Nazi camps.
Throughout his four years in the Łódź Ghetto (May 1940 – August 1944), Bryks 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 Łódź 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 include A Cat in the Ghetto (Yiddish: אַ קאַץ אין געטאָ; Hebrew: חתול בגטו) which was translated to English and Hebrew, and Ghetto Factory 76 (Chemical waste conversion) (Yiddish: געטאָ־פֿאַבריק 76 (״כעמישע אָפּפֿאַל־פֿערװערטונג״)) which was dramatized as Resort 76 by Shimon Wincelberg.
Bryks past away on October 2, 1974 at the age of 63 in New York city. He was survived by his beloved wife Hinda (Irene) Bryks (nee Wolf) and two daughters, Miriam and Bella.
“The writer who really feels it achieves his results by telling the truth, simply — because he knows what to select, how to construct his work.”
— Rachmil Bryks, on the role of the writer in his Credo
About Bella Bryks Klein
Bella Bryks Klein, daughter of the known Yiddish writer Rachmil Bryks, was born on November 2nd, 1948 in Stockholm, Sweden. Bella was a renowned Yiddish activist . She grew up in New York City and made aliyah to Israel while studying at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. During her studies she met and married Yonah Klein, who sadly passed away in 1998.
Bella is remembered in the Yiddish world for many important contributions to the preservation of Yiddish culture, though for her it was a second calling after a long professional career in the pharmaceutical industry.
For many years she was the administrative head of the Israeli branch of the Arbeter Ring (Workers Circle) and the Jewish Labor Bund in Tel Aviv, known as “Kalisher” because it was located on Kalisher Street. Though she was never given the title she deserved, she constantly organized and publicized their events. Thanks to her, Kalisher kept running for at least another decade and continued to be an important Yiddish cultural venue in Tel Aviv.
Bella had been the distributor of the weekly printed edition of the Yiddish Forverts in Israel, ensuring that the issues were sent out to its subscribers. When the monies coming from the New York office ran out, she sustained this work out of her own pocket because she knew how important it was for Holocaust survivors in Israel to receive a Yiddish newspaper.
Bella saw a need and created, assembled and distributed on her own the email newsletter Vos, Ven, Vu (“What, When, Where”), which provided consistent up-to-date listings of Yiddish-related events throughout Israel.
Bella spent many years championing her father’s literary legacy and helping his works be acknowledged and translated. She created and performed a one-woman show, In the Footsteps of My Father, at the California Institute for Yiddish Culture and Language in Los Angeles, that described, through songs and anecdotes, her childhood growing up with what was both the gift and burden of being tasked with helping her father with his oeuvre. It was recorded June 26, 2011.
Bella liked nothing better than to tell witty jokes and laugh along with the telling.
Bella passed away in Petah Tikvah, Israel, on Friday, Aug. 16, 2024 at the age of 75.
[Excerpt from https://forward.com/yiddish-world/645663/bella-bryks-klein-yiddish-activist-tel-aviv-died/]
Rachmil Bryks in Sweden (1946)
Rachmil Bryks and Irene Wolf on their wedding day in Stockholm, Sweden (September 15, 1946)
Bryks family in Central Park, New York (1951)
Rachmil and Irene Bryks with their 2 daughters, Miriam (right) and Bella (left) circa 1952
Bryks family (1955)
Irene Bryks, wife of Rachmil Bryks, supporting her husband while he was writing in their apartment, 1960’s, New York City
Rachmil Bryks's daughters - Myriam and Bella in Poland researching Rachmils books