fate of a Yiddish poet in communist eastern Europe: Naftali Herts Kon in Poland 1959-1965

The imprisonment of Naftali Herts Kon in Warsaw in 1960 on charges of spying for Israel was emblematic of the life path of a generation of Yiddish leftist writers in eastern Europe. In Poland before World War II he had been arrested for communist acitivities. He emigrated to Israel in 1965 where he struggled to make a living as a Yiddish writer. This article describes the experiences of Kon and provides a window into the disintegration of Yiddish literary life in eastern Europe after the Second World War and the disillusionment of a generation of Yiddish writers and poets who had been persecuted for their adherence to a communist ideology that later betrayed them