Avrom Sutzkever was the greatest Jewish poet of his time. He spent his childhood in Siberia and emerged as a writer in the youthful literary flowering of Jewish Vilna. As poet and Jew in the Vilna Ghetto, he was transformed into a living remnant of a people's near death, writing immortal works and helping to conceal Jewish cultural treasures for later rescue. After the war, he became a prophetic symbol and a cultural-historical institution, founding Yiddish literature's greatest journal in Israel. A committed Zionist, he earned his country's highest literary honor even as its powerful never abandoned their suspicion of Yiddish literary creativity.