Miriam Ulinover

Ulinover was born on 22 February 1890[1] in Łódź to parents Shimen and Sheyndl (née Gerzon) Hirshbeyn. Her parents divorced in 1905.[2][3] She spent some of her childhood with her maternal grandfather, Talmudic scholar Shaye Gerzon, in the shtetl Krzepice (near modern-day Częstochowa, Poland). Ulinover, however, lived for the majority of her life in Łódź.[3]

Sholem Aleichem inspired Ulinover to start writing when he met her in Łódź in 1905.[2][3][4] Ulinover is known for writing folk poetry and is renowned for being one of few religiously observant Jewish women to write poetry.[5]

Ulinover’s deliberately archaic language … contributed to an unusual statement of the modern. With an urge to preserve the ephemeral oral culture of the Jewish folk, and particularly of women, Ulinover created a new cultural artifact, the literary folk poem. Through the dialogue between a modern granddaughter and her old-fashioned grandmother, Ulinover introduced a specifically female voice into modern Yiddish poetry.

— Kathryn Hellerstein, A Question of Tradition: Women Poets in Yiddish, 1586-1987, chapter 4: The Folk and the Book

Some of Ulinover's poetry was featured in Ezra Korman's 1928 collection of Yiddish women poetry titled Yidishe dikhterins (Yiddish: ייִדישע דיכטערינס, lit. 'Yiddish Women Poets').[1]

In 1922, Ulinover published her own book of poetry with the help of David Frischmann, titled Der bobes oytser (Yiddish: דער באָבעס אוצר, lit. 'The Grandmother's Treasure').

On 18 August 1944, Ulinover was deported to Auschwitz upon the Łódź Ghetto's liquidation. She was gassed a few days later. While it is believed that she continued to write in the ghetto, many of her manuscripts are reported to have been lost during the Holocaust.[3]