June 30, 1882 – September 1941
Born in the countryside then moved to Warsaw, Hershele, as he was known by the people of Warsaw, was encouraged to write as a youth by Y. L. Peretz. He was one of the founders of the Lodz Yiddish Literary Group. He wrote children’s songs, humorous poems, and translations from Polish and Russian to Yiddish. His songs were so popular they were thought to be folk songs. He died of hunger with his wife and two children in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1941. Katsenelson, writing under the pen name of Khayim Goldberg in his poem Di Khronik fun Hershele’s Toit, (“The Chronicle of Hershele’s Death”) reports that Hershele left a thousand poems.