Literatureשלמה דיקמן

Shlomo Dykman

Shlomo Dykman was a Polish-born Israeli translator of Greek and Latin classics into Hebrew and a 1965 Israel Prize laureate.

1917 to 1965Hebrew translations of Greek tragediesHebrew translation of Virgil's AeneidPolish translation of Bialik's poemsIsrael Prize for literature, 1965

Born: 10 February 1917, Warsaw
Died: 17 March 1965, Israel
Occupation: linguist, translator, Hebraist
Education: University of Warsaw

Shlomo Dykman was born in 1917 in Warsaw

Dykman was born in Warsaw in 1917. He went to the Hinuch Hebrew Gymnasium and later studied classics at Warsaw University.

He started publishing translations and reviews in Poland in 1935, also translating from Hebrew into Polish. In 1939 he published all of Bialik's poems in Polish.

After World War II began, he fled to Bukhara and taught Hebrew there. In 1944 Soviet authorities arrested him and accused him of Zionist and counter-revolutionary activity. A death sentence was commuted to hard labor, which he served in coal mines in the northern Ural Mountains.

He returned to Warsaw in 1957 and moved to Israel in 1960, settling in Jerusalem. He translated works by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Virgil, Lucretius and Ovid into Hebrew. He died in Jerusalem in 1965, and his son Aminadav Dykman also became a translator.