Dan Pagis

Who was Dan Pagis?

Dan Pagis was an Israeli poet, lecturer and Holocaust survivor. He was born in Rădăuţi, Bukovina in Romania and imprisoned as a child in a concentration camp in Ukraine. He escaped in 1944 and in 1946 arrived safely in Israel where he became a schoolteacher in a kibbutz.

He earned his PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where he later taught Medieval Hebrew literature. His first published book of poetry was Sheon ha-Tsel in 1959. In 1970 he published a major work entitled Gilgul – which may be translated as "Revolution, cycle, transformation, metamorphosis, metempsychosis," etc. Other poems include: "Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway-Car," "Testimony, "Europe, Late," "Autobiography," and "Draft of a Reparations Agreement." Pagis knew many languages, and translated multiple works of literature.

He died in Israel on July 29, 1986, after a battle with cancer.

Pagis' most widely cited poem is :

Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway Car

Here in this carload

I, Eve,

with my son Abel.

If you see my older boy,

Cain, the son of man,

tell him that I