Binem Heller

Binem Heller was born in 1908 in Warsaw

Binem Heller was born in Warsaw on January 25, 1908, to a poor, religious Jewish family. He studied in a cheder and a yeshiva until age 14, then became a worker, including in a glove workshop.

He began publishing poems in Yiddish in 1930 and became known among Poland's proletarian poets. His first collection, "Through the Bars," appeared in Łódź and was confiscated by the Polish authorities. He lived in Paris from 1937 to 1939, then returned to Warsaw.

During World War II he lived in the Soviet Union, in Bialystok, Alma-Ata and Moscow. His first wife, Golda, died during the war, and they had a daughter, Dina. He helped write the script of the 1946 film Unzere kinder, about the Holocaust.

Back in Warsaw, he edited the literary monthly Yidishe Shriftn. He later left communism, lived briefly in France and Belgium, and moved to Israel with his family in February 1957.

In Israel he married actress Hadassah Kastin. He won the Manger Prize in 1981, and Chava Alberstein recorded two of his poems. He died in Tel Aviv in 1998 and was buried in Yarkon Cemetery.