Dan Pagis

Dan Pagis was born in 1930 in Chișinău

Dan Pagis was born in 1930 in Chișinău under the name Severin and grew up in Rădăuți in Bukovina, Romania. His father moved to the Land of Israel in 1934, and after his mother died that year he was raised by his maternal grandparents. In October 1941 he was deported with the family to camps in Transnistria, where his grandfather died.

After the war he returned to Romania with his grandmother, and in 1946 he came to the Land of Israel with Youth Aliyah. He changed his first name to Dan, was educated at Kibbutz Merhavia and studied at the Kibbutzim Seminary. From 1951 to 1955 he taught at an elementary school in Kibbutz Gat.

In 1956 he moved to Jerusalem to study English and Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University, where he earned his PhD and later taught medieval Hebrew literature. His first poetry book, The Shadow Dial, appeared in 1959, and Transformation followed in 1970. That book included his poem Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway Car, which is engraved at Yad Vashem and at Bełżec.

He also wrote the children's book An Egg in Disguise, translated literature and edited the poems of David Vogel. He won the Prime Minister's Prize for Hebrew Writers in 1973. He died of cancer in Jerusalem in 1986 and was buried at Har HaMenuchot.