Haim Lensky (1905–1943), also Hayyim Lensky, was a Russian poet who wrote in Hebrew. He wrote the bulk of his verse while imprisoned in several Soviet labor camps from 1934 onward.[1]
Lensky was born in the Belarusian town of Slonim and lived in Dziarečyn, Leningrad, and elsewhere.[2] He was one of few Russian Jewish poets to write in Hebrew.[3] Lensky's poems reflect the realities of the camps in which he was imprisoned, the Russian landscape, and literature in a variety of languages and national traditions. He was able to receive books through friends while in the camps, and read poets such as Afanasy Fet and Fyodor Tyutchev.[4]
A few of Lensky's poems were published in Israel during his lifetime, and were first collected there under the title Beyond the River Lethe in 1960.[2]