Haim Lensky

Haim Lensky (1905–1942 or 1943), also Hayyim Lensky, was a Russian poet who wrote in Hebrew. He wrote the bulk of his verse while imprisoned in several Soviet labor camps from 1934 onward. [cite book|last=Pinkus|first=Benjamin|title=The Jews of the Soviet Union|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge|date=1990|pages=112|isbn=0521389267]

Lensky was born in the Belarussian town of Slonim and lived in Derechin, Leningrad, and elsewhere.cite book|last=Lapidus|first=Rina|coauthors=Jonathan Chipman, trans.|title=Between Snow and Desert Heat: Russian Influences on Hebrew Literature, 1870-1970|publisher=Hebrew Union College Press|location=Cincinnati|date=2003|pages=95|isbn=0878204512] He was one of few Russian Jewish poets to write in Hebrew. [cite book|last=Frankel|first=Jonathan |title=Reshaping the Past: Jewish History and the Historians|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=New York and Oxford|date=1994|pages=370|isbn=0195093550] Lensky's poems reflect the realities of the camps in which he was imprisoned, the Russian landscape, and literature in a variety of languages and national traditions. He was able to receive books through friends while in the camps, and read poets such as Afanasy Fet and Fyodor Tutchev. [Lapidus, 96-97.]

A few of Lensky's poems were published in Israel during his lifetime, and were first collected there under the title "Beyond the River Lethe" in 1960.

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