Nelly Sachs

About the Poet:
Nelly Sachs was born Dec. 10, 1891 in Berlin and died in Stockholm on May 12, 1970. She was a German-Swedish poet and dramatist known for her artistic expressions of the grief and suffering of her fellow Jews. When, with Shmuel Yosef Agnon, she was awarded the 1966 Nobel Prize for Literature, she observed that Agnon represented Israel whereas “I represent the tragedy of the Jewish people.” She is said to write in the lamentation style of poetry, attributed to The Book of Lamentations, in which the prophet Jeremiah laments the destruction of Jerusalem – an apt poetic form for the sorrow and loss of her people.