Poetic Obituaries: The horrors of the war provided inspiration

for his darkest poetry; but his darkest poetry, composed in sewers and once even in a coffin, proved a shield against the worst of the war's horrors. "If I didn't write, I wouldn't live," he reflected 40 years after the end of the conflict. "When I was in the Vilna ghetto, I believed, as an observant Jew believes in the Messiah, that as long as I was writing, was able to be a poet, I would have a weapon against death."

But Sutzkever's work was important not just to his own survival. In recording the Yiddish-speaking world from which he sprang, his poems also came to be considered a key element in his culture's preservation and revival.

from The Daily Telegraph: Avrom Sutzkever

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