Isaiah Spiegel was an inmate of the Lodz Ghetto from its inception in 1940 until its liquidation in 1944. While there, he wrote short stories depicting Jewish life in the ghetto and managed to hide them before he was deported to Auschwitz. After being freed, he returned to Lodz to retrieve and publish his stories.

ISAIAH SPIEGEL (1906-1990) was born in the industrial city of Lódź in 1906. After surviving Auschwitz, he immigrated to Israel, where he continued to write stories, novels, poems, and essays.

DAVID H. HIRSCH, Professor Emeritus of English and American literature and Judaic studies at Brown University, has translated a variety of Yiddish and Polish texts with ROSLYN HIRSCH, who escaped the ghetto with her mother in 1943 and remained in hiding until liberation in 1945. She immigrated to the United States in 1949 and is currently working on several translations of Holocaust writers.