Flames from the Earth: A Novel from the Lódz Ghetto

182 Pages·2023·3.627 MB·English

by  Isaiah Spiegel, Julian Levinson

Flames from the Earth
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Isaiah Spiegel
Flames from
the Earth
A Novel from the Łódź Ghetto
Translated from the Yiddish by Julian Levinson
Northwestern University Press ✦ Evanston, Illinois
Northwestern University Press
www.nupress.northwestern.edu
English translation copyright © 2023 by Northwestern University Press.
Originally published in Yiddish in 1966 under the title Flamen fun der erd.
Copyright © 1966 by Israel- Book Publishing House. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Spiegel, Isaiah, 1906– 1990, author. | Levinson, Julian, translator.
Title: Flames from the earth : a novel from the Łódź ghetto / Isaiah
Spiegel ; translated from the Yiddish by Julian Levinson.
Other titles: Flamen fun der erd. English  | Northwestern world classics.
Description: Evanston, Illinois : Northwestern University Press, 2023. | 
Series: Northwestern world classics
Identifi ers: LCCN 2022041769 | ISBN 9780810145573 (paperback) | 
ISBN 9780810145580 (cloth) | ISBN 9780810145597 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Holocaust, Jewish (1939– 1945)— Fiction. | Jews—
Poland— Łódź— History— 20th century— Fiction. | Litzmannstadt–
Getto (Łódź, Poland)— Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Jewish | 
LITERARY CRITICISM / European / Eastern (see also Russian &
Former Soviet Union) | LCGFT: Novels. | Fiction.
Classifi cation: LCC PJ5129.S6812 F513 2023 | DDC 839/.134— dc23/
eng/20221104
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022041769
To my parents, Sarah- Gitel and Moshe,
My sisters Clara, Miriam, and Iske,
Murdered in Chelmno, Auschwitz, and Shtuthof
1941–1 944
Martyred
— I.S.
In memory of Maimon Obermayer (1916– 1939)
— J.L.

contents
Translator’s Introduction ix
Flames from the Earth
1 A Meeting in Snow 3
2 At the Bedside of the Dying 13
3 Th e Dead Stradivarius 19
4 Last Will and Testament 25
5 In the Darkness 33
6 On the Other Side 37
7 Th e Bell Ringer 45
8 Th e Stranger 51
9 In the Cellar 59
10 Black Birds 67
11 Purifying the Dead 75
12 Piles of Clothes 81
13 Th e Tower 89
14 Th e Rope 97
15 Secrets of the Mound 107
16 Bones 115
17 Th e Decree 121
18 Flames from the Earth 129
Translator’s Aft erword 133
Translator’s Acknowledgments 147
Books by Isaiah Spiegel 150
translator’s introduction
As a writer, I have never really left the ghetto. I still see
the people, the faces, the suff ering crowd . . . Th at whole
period still lives inside of me like a dybbuk.
— Isaiah Spiegel (1973)
Isaiah Spiegel (1906– 1990) was one of the most beloved Yiddish
writers to emerge from the Holocaust experience. He won nearly
every major prize awarded to Yiddish writers, including the Inter-
national Culture Congress Prize (1955), the Itsik Manger Prize for
Yiddish Literature (1972), the Yankev Glatshteyn Prize (1977), and
the Yiddish Writers Union Prize (1981). A two- volume collection of
essays about his work was published to commemorate his eightieth
birthday. His most devoted readers came from the global commu-
nity we might call Yiddishland, with centers in Tel Aviv, Paris, New
York, Johannesburg, Melbourne, and Buenos Aires. Nearly every-
one in this dispersed world had been directly aff ected by the Nazi
nightmare. Nearly all had restarted their lives in unfamiliar places
aft er unimaginable losses, and for many, the Yiddish language itself
had become their only true home. Th ese readers turned to Spie-
gel’s writing to revisit the traumatic scenes of the Hitler years in
the company of a trustworthy guide, someone who survived more
than four years in the Łódź Ghetto, Auschwitz, and a work camp in
Saxony— and who managed to transform his experiences into com-
pelling works of literature. His writings are infused with symbolism,
ornate metaphors, subtle irony, and beauty. As one of his earliest
reviewers put it, “Spiegel is perhaps the only one who has given us
the precious gift of the true ghetto-t ale, because he has solved the
problem of organically combining the authenticity of facts with the
power of a great tapestry.”1 Spiegel was embraced by his readers not
so much because he told them things they did not know, but be-
cause there was something reassuring, even uplift ing, in the way he
shaped traumatic experiences into art.
✦ ix ✦