Born in Letshitz Poland into a poor religious family that moved to Lodz, Simkha learned to make gloves. His father and mother died soon after being in the Lodz Ghetto. His poetic talent blossomed in the most impoverished circumstances of Ghetto life. His poem, Lekh Lekha, (“Go Forth”) in which he tells his little girl Blimele, (“Little Flower”), that it is time to go to the trains is one of the most moving and famous pieces of Holocaust poetry in Yiddish. Much of his writing in the Ghetto, including his diary, were never found. His wife and small daughter were taken to Auschwitz from the Ghetto in 1942. He was taken in 1944 to Auschwitz, then to the concentration camp “Kaufering”, where he died of typhus. Shayevitch wrote stories and poetry. A book was published and printed in 1939, but never could be distributed under Nazi occupation. It disappeared.