Yitzhak Katzenelson in Vittel and his lament for the Yiddishland

Abstract

This article focuses on Yitzhak Katzenelson – a pedagogue, playwright and poet from Łódź – and his work on the epic poem The Song of the Murdered Jewish People written in Vittel and published in Paris in 1945. The Vittel internment camp for foreigners served as the first destination for Polish Jews with travel documents from Latin American countries, obtained primarily in the Warsaw ghetto in the so-called ‘Hotel Polski Affair’. Their final destination was Auschwitz, where they perished on arrival in May 1944.