Biography
Uri Zvi Grinberg was born in Bialikamin, Galicia, then Austria-Hungary, into a prominent Hasidic family. He was raised in Lemberg (Lviv). Some of his poems in Yiddish and Hebrew were published before he was 20. In 1915 he was drafted into the army and fought in the First World War. After returning to Lemberg, he was witness to the pogroms of November 1918. Grinberg and his family miraculously escaped being shot by Polish soldiers, an experience which convinced him that all Jews living in the "Kingdom of the Cross” faced physical annihilation.
Grinberg moved to Warsaw, where he wrote for the Yiddish newspaper Moment. After a brief stay in Berlin, he immigrated to Mandate Palestine (the Land of Israel) in 1923. Grinberg was in Poland when the Second World War erupted in 1939, but managed to escape.
In 1950, Grinberg married Aliza, with whom he had two daughters and three sons. He added "Tur-Malka" to the family name, but continued to use "Grinberg" to honor family members who perished in the Holocaust.
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