Mendl Neugröschel (1903–1965)

Mendel Neugröschel was born to a Jewish family in Nowy Sacz, Galicia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (present-day Poland). He practiced law and wrote poetry in Yiddish in Vienna. His first three lyric collections were Shvartsn Malkhes (In the Dark Realm, 1924), Getseltn (Tents, 1930), and Kaylikhdige Teg (Circular Days, 1935). In 1936, he published Kleyne Antologye fun der Yidisher Lirik in Galitsye 1897–1935 (A Brief Anthology of Yiddish Poetry in Galicia). After the Nazi Anschluss (annexation) of Austria in 1938, he was sent to the concentrations camps at Dachau and Buchenwald, but was released in March 1939. He and his family then immigrated to Brazil. Two years later, they arrived in the USA, settling in New York City. Neugröschel felt himself a stranger in New York and wrote sad, nostalgic lyrics about the Jewish world of his youth. His prose study, Di Moderne Yidishe Literatur in Galitsie (Modern Yiddish Literature in Galicia) published in 1955, provided a rich insight into the Galician neo-Romantic group that was influential between 1904 and 1918.