Michael Lev

Michael Lev was born in 1917 in Pohrebyshche

Lev was born in 1917 in Pohrebyshche, today in Vinnytsia Oblast of Ukraine. In 1926 his family moved to work the land in a Jewish national district in the Kryvyi Rih region.

From 1935 he lived in Moscow and studied Yiddish language and literature at the pedagogical institute. He worked at the central Jewish library and at the newspaper Der Emes, and began publishing in 1936.

In World War II he fought in the Soviet army. He was badly wounded and captured by the Germans in October 1941, and in the summer of 1942 he escaped to the partisans, where he rose to command a reconnaissance company and serve as a battalion chief of staff.

After the war he worked at the Emes publishing house and the newspaper Eynikeyt. Between 1948 and 1995 he published 11 books in Yiddish, and his work also appeared in Russian and other languages.

He moved to Israel in 1996 and lived in Rehovot, where he received several literary prizes. He campaigned for a street named after Alexander Pechersky, the leader of the Sobibor uprising, which opened in Safed in 2005. He died in 2013.