Poetic Obituaries: In the early 1950s, the Jewish poet

and novelist Emanuel Litvinoff, who has died aged 96, appeared at the first poetry platform at the ICA, in London. He castigated TS Eliot--whom he admired and was present at the event--for reprinting, after the Holocaust, a 1920 poem featuring the lines: "The rats are underneath the piles/The Jew is underneath the lot." From that moment, through to Emanuel's major poems, such as The Dead Sea (from his 1973 collection Notes for a Survivor), several novels and his memoir, Journey Through a Small Planet (1972), Emanuel's voice was one raised in protest against the fate of the Jews. His editorship of the monthly newsletter Jews in Eastern Europe, which gave details of the atrocities being perpetuated against the Jews of the Soviet Union, made a serious contribution to the legislation that eventually allowed Jewish people to leave the USSR for Israel.

from The Guardian: Emanuel Litvinoff obituary

~~~~~~~~~~~