Tsveyuntsvantsik – lider [22 – poems], Yehiel Feiner. Warsaw: Kultur-Lige, 1931. Yiddish.
Poetry book published by Yehiel Di-Nur (Ka Tsetnik) in Warsaw, before the war, when he was 22 years old (“Tsveyuntsvantsik Lider; Tsveyuntsvantsik Yoren” = twenty two poems, twenty two years”). Illustration on last page by the artist Yitzchak Broyner.
Author Yehiel Di-Nur (formerly Feiner, 1909-2001), native of Sosnowiec, Poland, an Auschwitz concentration camp survivor (where he lost all his family), is known as one of the most important authors who wrote about the Holocaust. Di-Nur arrived with “HaBricha” to Israel, through Italy, and there devoted his life to writing about his experiences in the camp. While writing his books, Di-Nur was said to go back to “the planet of Auschwitz”, secluded in his room, dressed in his prisoner’s clothes, without showering, eating nor sleeping for days. His books, including some very disturbing depictions, were written while he remained totally anonymous, using his pen name “Ka Tsetnik”.
Di-Nur’s identity was revealed during the Eichmann Trial when he was summoned to testify. When the prosecutor asked: “why are you hiding behind your pen name ‘Ka Tsetnik’?” Di-Nur replied: “This is not a pen name. I do not consider myself an author writing literature. This is the chronicle of the Auschwitz planet. I was there for about two years. Time there is not like here, on our planet. Each fraction of a minute turns on a different time wheel. The inhabitants of that planet did not have names. They did not have parents or children. They did not dress like we dress here. They were not born there and they did not give birth…they did not live by the laws of this world and they did not die. Their name was the number “Ka Tsetnik”.
During the years after the war, whenever Di-Nur learned about the existence of copies of his early book Tsveyuntsvantsik, he destroyed the copies he came across with by burning or cutting them. In the end of 1993, in a letter to Shlomo Goldberg, the head of the circulation department of the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem, Di-Nur wrote: “In 1953 I was informed, while being in New-York, that ‘the book’ by the author who perished in Auschwitz is exhibited in the National Library as a rare exhibit, under glass, I went to the library, presented my Pen card [PEN – International organization of authors, editors and poets] and said that I am an Israeli author who writes the life story of this author who perished, I got the book, walked out of the library and burned the book.
About thirty years ago, someone in Tel-Aviv told me that ‘the book’ exists in the National Library in Jerusalem. I went to Jerusalem, and it turned out that the director of the library knew who I was. I did not need to ‘cheat’ in order to get the book, I left the library and burned ‘the book’.
A few months ago I heard from two students, who follow the life of Ka Tsetnik, that ‘the book’ is in the National Library in Jerusalem. And the rest is known […].
I have one more request: as a token and testimony I attached here remainders of ‘the book’, please burn them just as my world and all that was dear to me was burnt in the Auschwitz crematorium”.
In the year 2011 the remnants of “Tsveyuntsvantsik” shreds were exhibited in the National Library in Jerusalem in an exhibition “Unrivaled Unrevealed – Select Treasures of the National Library” (Jerusalem, 2011; pp.52-53), side by side with manuscripts by the Rambam, Isaac Newton, Martin Buber, Franz Kafka, S.Y. Agnon and some other very rare items.
62, [1] pp, 11.5X17.5 cm. Fair-good condition. Spots and moisture marks. Professionally restored tears. Dark spots where binding pins were (removed). Adhesive tape on title page. Inscriptions in pen on page 10 (ink spread on nearby pages). Missing corner on last leaf. No cover. New binding.
Very rare, we do not know of any other existing copies.