Franz Meyer. Marc Chagall, L’Oeuvre Grave.

The Yiddish writer, journalist and painter Mendel Mann has been described by literary critic Sol Liptzin as ‘among the finest novelists of the Holocaust generation.’ Mann was born in 1916 in Plonsk, Poland (the same town as David Ben Gurion.) His first published poems appeared in the Polish Yiddish press in 1938. Drafted into the Red Army during the war, he took part in the defense of Moscow and witnessed the liberation of Berlin. Thereafter, Mann returned to Poland, and wrote of the devastating emptiness of the Jewish streets of his hometown in a book of poems Di Shtilkayt Mont (“Silence Demands.”) Published in 1945, it was the first Yiddish book to appear in liberated Poland. After time in Israel, Mann later moved to France where he became friends with Chagall, who in turn painted his portrait, entitling it: “L’Auteur Mendel Mann dans son Village.” Mann died in Paris in 1975.