Vayland was born to a religious family in Lublin area. By age 14 he had lost both parents. He was apprenticed to a sign painter. His first poems appeared in 1937 in journals and in the book Ershter Krayz, (“First Circle”), 1938. He suffered starvation in the ghetto; see his poem “Letter to Giterman” February, 2, 1942. During the great expulsion from the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942, he, with his three month old baby in his arms, walked to the trains.