The Writings of a Wandering Poet

In this podcast episode, we learn about a remarkable manuscript that survived the Holocaust and was later discovered to be the work of one of the most interesting modern creators of Hebrew literature in the 20th century: David Vogel. The manuscript is made up of pages upon pages of miniscule, uniform handwriting and was hidden by Vogel in the back garden of the boarding house in Hauteville, France where he was staying before his arrest by the Gestapo in 1944. Vogel was murdered in Auschwitz concentration camp at the age of 52, but his writings and the story of his life live on to inspire, inform and commemorate the turbulent 1930s in Europe.  

 Vogel was born in Staniv in the Podolia region in 1891, then in the Russian empire and today in Ukraine. He moved to Vilnius, where he attended yeshiva, and then in 1912 to Vienna - the center of literature and culture during the Fin de siècle. At the beginning of the First World War Vogel was imprisoned in Vienna – and not for the last time in his short life - as he was considered a subject of an enemy country; Russia. He met and married Ada Nadler, with whom he had one daughter, Tamara. In 1925 they moved to Paris, the city of lights that beckoned him and the literary and artistic people of its time.  

We are joined in this episode by Amir Ben-Amram, archivist at The Gnazim Institute of the Hebrew Writers Association, the largest Hebrew literature archive in the world, who will talk us through the fascinating journey behind this discovery. From the manuscript's burial in Hauteville, France, we follow its voyage across Europe and the sea to America, passing through the hands of Vogel's close friend, and painter, Avraham Goldberg, to Shimon Halkin, writer and poet and finally to Asher Barash, chairman of the Hebrew Writers' Association and founder of the Gnazim Archive, where it found its final resting place. The manuscript is now part of the collection of The Gnazim Institute of the Hebrew Writers Association.

Featured guests: 

Amir Ben-Amram is an archivist at the Gnazim Institute of the Hebrew Writers Association. Podcast host is Katharina Freise. 

• Music accreditation: Blue Dot Sessions. Tracks – Opening and closing: Stillness. Incidental, Gathering Stasis, Pencil Marks, Uncertain Ground, Marble Transit and Snowmelt. License Creative Commons Atttribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (BB BY-NC 4.0).
• Andy Clark, Podcastmaker, Studio Lijn 14