Isaiah Spiegel (, ; January 14, 1906 – July 14, 1990) was Polish and Israeli poet, writer and essayist writing in Yiddish, a Holocaust survivor (Łódź Ghetto and Auschwitz II-Birkenau).Jeszajahu Szpigel (ID: psb.33824.1), Spiegel (Szpigel) Izajasz, Polski Słownik JudaistycznyШпигель Иеша‘яху, The Jewish Encyclopedia in Russian, Based on the Shorter Jewish Encyclopedia (Itzhak Yanasowicz), "ישעיהו שפיגל - המספר של הגיטו" ("Isaiah Spiegel - The Ghetto's Narrator"),
Before deportation from the Łódź Ghetto he hid some writing. After the war he found the manuscripts with 16 stories, recalled more of them, and published.Ghetto Kingdom After World War II he worked as a teacher in Łódź and wrote short stories in Yiddish. In 1951 he emigrated to Israel, where he worked as a clerk and continued writing in Yiddish.
He was one of the portrayed in the 1948 documentary ("We, Who Survivied", ) by Natan Gross, the last documentary in Poland shot completely in Yiddish.
Books ("Narrative prose from the Lodz Ghetto: Sixteen stories deciphered from surviving manuscripts, with an introduction and interview with the author") 1947: Małches geto; Łódź, short stories 1998: Ghetto Kingdom: Tales of the Lodz Ghetto (translated by David H. Hirsch and Roslyn Hirsch) 1966: Flamen fun der erd, Tel Aviv, novel 2022: Flames from the Earth: A Novel from the Lódz Ghetto (translated from Yiddish by Julian Levinson) 1966: Shtign cum himl (Stairway to heaven; short stories : translation from Yiddish to Hebrew)
Awards 1972: Itzik Manger Prize in Yiddish literature 1975: Fichman Prize for Literature and Art (issued by the World Federation of Bessarabian Jews)הוענקו פרםים ע"ש פיכמן ("Fichman Prizes were Awarded"), Davar, June 4, 1975
References
Further reading The translator's introduction to Ghetto Kingdom contains an extensive biographical essay about Isaiah Spiegel