Literatureריקלה גלזר

Rikle Glezer

Rikle Glezer was a Jewish poet and World War II partisan from Vilnius who wrote songs about the Holocaust in the Vilna Ghetto.

1924 to 2010The song "It Was a Summer's Day"Songs written in the Vilna GhettoPartisan fighting near Vilnius

Born: 17 December 1924, Vilnius
Died: 12 January 2010
Occupation: poet, partisan

Rikle Glezer was born in 1924 in Vilnius

Glezer was born in Vilnius on December 17, 1924, to a Jewish family. Her father was a jeweler. She attended a Yiddish school and later a Polish school, and she belonged to SKIF, a Bundist children's group.

In 1941 the Germans occupied the city and sent its Jews to the Vilna Ghetto. Her father was taken early in the occupation. In the ghetto she wrote songs to popular tunes, including "My Ghetto" and "It Was a Summer's Day," which tells of the march into the ghetto and the killings at Ponar.

When she was deported from the ghetto by train, she jumped off and reached the forest. She joined the partisans in the Rūdninkai forest as a fighter and kept writing. She returned to Vilnius with Soviet forces in July 1944.

In December 1948 she emigrated to Israel with her family on the ship Nagba, and the family settled in Holon. A book of her poems was published in Tel Aviv in 1991. In 1996 she gave testimony about her experience to the Shoah Foundation.