הלר, בונים

Bunim Heller (1908–1998), Yiddish poet and social activist, born in Warsaw, Poland (then part of the Russian Empire).  He attended a traditional heder and then a yeshiva, but left at the age of 14 when started to work as a glove maker. He started publishing his poems in 1930 and soon he was recognized as a poet of the working class in Poland. He immigrated to Belgium in 1937 and then moved to Paris, France. He returned to Poland in 1939, only to flee the German occupation of Warsaw ad taking refuge in Bialystok, in the Soviet occupied areas of Poland. He spent the years of WW2 in Alma Ata (now Almaty) in the Soviet Kazakhstan, and returned to Poland in 1947. he was editor of Yidishe Shriftn and Yidish Buch literary magazines. In 1950 he published Friling in Poilen ("Spring in Poland"), a collection of poems from the 1930s, followed by additional collections of poems during the early 1950. At the time, Heller was recognized as a leading Yiddish poet in the Communist states of Eastern Europe. Heller left Poland and after a short sojourn in Belgium and France, he immigrated to Israel in 1957.  

He published twenty-three volums of poetry, including Di erd hot getsiters (“The Earth Shook”, 1947), Heimerd (1951), Geklibene lider (“Selected Poems”, 1952), Baym rand (1957), Naye lider (“New Songs”, 1964), In varshaver geto iz hoidesh nisen (“In the Warsaw Ghetto is the month of Nissan “, 1973), Der gaist funem sturem (“The Spirit of the Storm”, 1992).  

Heller was awarded the Mendeli Prize for his book The Month of Nissan in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1975, and the Itzik Manger Prize for Yiddish literature in 1981.