Isaiah Spiegel

Life & Legacy

Isaiah Spiegel (Hebrew: ישעיהו שפיגל, Polish: Jeszajahu Szpigel; January 14, 1906 – July 14, 1990) was Polish and Israeli poet, writer and essayist writing in Yiddish, a Holocaust survivor (Łódź Ghetto and Auschwitz II-Birkenau).
Before deportation from the Łódź Ghetto he hid some writing. After the war he found the manuscripts with 16 stories, recalled more of them, and published.
After World War II he worked as a teacher in Łódź and wrote short stories in Yiddish. In 1951 he emigrated to Israel, where he worked as a clerk and continued writing in Yiddish.
He was one of the portrayed in the 1948 documentary Mir Lebngeblibene ("We, Who Survivied", Yiddish: מיר לעבנגעבליבענע) by Natan Gross, the last documentary in Poland shot completely in Yiddish.