Isaiah Spiegel was an inmate of the Lodz Ghetto from its inception in 1940 until its liquidation in 1944. While there, he wrote short stories depicting Jewish life in the ghetto and managed to hide them before he was deported to Auschwitz. After being freed, he returned to Lodz to retrieve and publish his stories. The stories examine the relationship between inmates and their families, their friends, their Christian former neighbors, the German soldiers, and, ultimately, the world of hopelessness and desperation that surrounded them. In using his creative powers to transform the suffering and death of his people into stories that preserve their memory, Spiegel succeeds in affirming the humanity and dignity the Germans were so intent on destroying.

Ghetto Kingdom: Tales of the Lodz Ghetto (Jewish Lives)

Literature & Fiction

Spiegel, Isaiah

Genre Fiction

Northwestern University Press

Ghetto Kingdom: Tales of the Lodz Ghetto

Flames from the Earth: A Novel from the Lódz Ghetto (Northwestern World Classics)

An emotionally powerful, poetic Yiddish novel, available in English for the first time, that expands our understanding of Holocaust literature and testimony\nFlames from the Earth: A Novel from the Łódź Ghetto is an autobiographical novel written by Isaiah Spiegel, one of the most revered Yiddish authors to survive the Holocaust. Originally published in Israel in 1966, the novel brings together material that Spiegel wrote while imprisoned in the Łódź Ghetto, which he recovered from a cellar when he returned from Auschwitz after the war. The only works by Spiegel previously available to English readers have been short stories.\nIn this, his first novel, Spiegel explores a complex web of characters in and around the Łódź Ghetto: Vigdor and Gitele, lovers who are involved in the ghetto resistance movement; Nicodem, a Polish priest, who hides a member of the Jewish underground; Stefan Kaczmarek, a Polish tavern keeper who betrays Nicodem to preserve his own smuggling business; Franz Jessike, a Nazi guard who blackmails local Poles for personal gain; and Chaim Vidaver, the heroic leader of the ghetto resistance. Based largely on historical events, the novel’s lyrical style echoes its emotional intensity.\nGripping and atmospheric, Flames from the Earth honors daring acts of heroism and human connections forged amid unthinkable conditions. Spiegel’s novel represents an important contribution to the archive of literary depictions of historical trauma.

History & Criticism

Yeshaʻyahu Shpigel--prozah sipurit mi-geṭo Lodz': Shishah-ʻaśar sipurim mefuʻnaḥim ʻal pi kitve-yad she-nitslu be-tseruf mavo ṿe-reʼayon ʻim ha-meḥaber (Yiddish Edition)

Hotsaʼat sefarim ʻa. sh. Y.L. Magnes, ha-Universiṭah ha-ʻIvrit

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Books by Spiegel, Isaiah