"Jud" – Poetry Book by Moshe Broderzon – Lodz, 1939 – Photomontage Works with Photographs by Helmar Lerski / ...

"Jud" – Poetry Book by Moshe Broderzon – Lodz, 1939 – Photomontage Works with Photographs by Helmar Lerski / Dedication Handwritten by the Author
"Jud" ["י"] – poem in fifty parts by Moshe Broderzon. Photomontage and graphic design: Yehudah Lewin and Pinchas Szwarc. Photography: H. Lerski [Helmar Lerski] and M. Grossman [Mendel Grossman?]. Lodz: H. Prowizor, 1939. Yiddish.
The last poetry book by the Yiddish poet Moshe Broderzon in which he expresses his presentiment of the disaster threatening European Jewry. The book is accompanied by four plates with graphic works: title page with author's photograph and three photomontage works, with photographs of Jewish figures. In one of the plates appears a large figure of a German soldier, with Jews bending over a bucket below. The four plates are signed in the plate by the designers, Yehudah Lewin and Pinchas Szwarc. Some of the photographs which were integrated into the photomontages were taken by Helmar Lerski.
On the leaf preceding the title page appears a handwritten dedication by Moshe Broderzon (Yiddish), to "Y. Papyernikov" (presumably, poet Yosef Papyernikov), dated 1939.
Moshe Broderzon (1890-1956), poet, playwright and founder of a number of artist groups in Poland: the avant-garde group "Yung Yiddish", "Ararat" theater in Lodz and the first Yiddish puppet theater "Had Gadya". After the occupation of Poland by Germany he fled to the Soviet Union, and was arrested in 1950, accused of anti-communist activity and sentenced to prison in Siberia. Broderzon was released in 1955 and returned to Lodz, where he died in 1956 of a heart attack.
[52] pp + [4] plates, approx. 24.5 cm. Good condition. Some stains and blemishes (mostly at margins). Tear to margin of one plate. Ink-stamp at bottom margin of last leaf ("Lodz 1939"). New binding and endpapers.