Uri Zvi Greenberg was born in the Galician town Bilyi Kamin, in Austria-Hungary, into a prominent Hasidic family. He was raised in Lemberg where he received a traditional Jewish religious education. In 1915, he was drafted into the Austrian army and fought in the First World War. His experience at the fording of the Save River, where many of his comrades in arms died or were severely wounded, affected him deeply, and appeared in his future writings for years to come. After returning to Lemberg, he was witness to the pogroms of November 1918. Greenberg and his family miraculously escaped being shot by Polish soldiers, celebrating their victory over the Ukrainians, an experience which convinced him that all Jews living in the “Kingdom of the Cross” faced physical annihilation. Greenberg moved to Warsaw in 1920, where he wrote for the radical literary publications of young Jewish poets. After a brief stay in Berlin, he immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1923. Greenberg spent most of the 1930s in Poland, working as a Revisionist-Zionist activist until the time when the Second World War erupted in 1939. At the outset of the war, Greenberg was able to escape and return home to Mandatory Palestine. His parents and sisters remained behind and were subsequently murdered during the Holocaust.
Personal
In 1950, Greenberg married Aliza, with whom he had two daughters and three sons. He added "Tur-Malka" to the family name, but continued to use "Greenberg" to honor family members who perished in the Holocaust.
Literary career
Some of his poems in Yiddish and Hebrew were published when he was 16. His first works were published in 1912 in the Labor Zionist weekly Der yudisher arbayter in Lemberg and in Hebrew in Hashiloah in Odessa. His first book, in Yiddish, was published in Lwów while he was fighting on the Serbian front. In 1920, Greenberg moved to Warsaw, with its lively Jewish cultural scene. He was one of the founders of the Chaliastra, a group of young Yiddish writers that included Melech Ravitch. He also edited a Yiddish literary journal, Albatros. In the wake of his iconoclastic depictions of Jesus in the second issue of Albatros, particularly his prose poem Royte epl fun veybeymer, the journal was banned by the Polish censors and Grinberg fled to Berlin to escape prosecution in November 1922. The magazine incorporated avant-garde elements both in content and typography, taking its cue from German periodicals like Die Aktion and Der Sturm. Greenberg published the last two issues of Albatros in Berlin before renouncing European society and immigrating to Palestine in December 1923. In his early days in Palestine, Greenberg wrote for Davar, one of the main newspapers of the Labour Zionist movement. In his poems and articles he warned of the fate in store for the Jews of the Diaspora. After the Holocaust, he mourned the fact that his terrible prophecies had come true. His works represent a synthesis of traditional Jewish values and an individualistic lyrical approach to life and its problems. They draw on Jewish sources such as the Bible, the Talmud and the prayer book, but are also influenced by European literature.
Literary motifs
In the second and third issues of Albatros, Greenberg invokes pain as a key marker of the modern era. This theme is illustrated in Royte epl fun vey beymer and Veytikn-heym af slavisher erd.
Political activism
In 1930, Greenberg joined the Revisionist camp, representing the Revisionist movement at several Zionist congresses and in Poland. After the 1929 Hebron massacre, he became more militant. With Abba Ahimeir and Joshua Yeivin, he founded Brit HaBirionim, a clandestine, self-declared fascist faction of the Revisionist movement which adopted an activist policy of violating British mandatory regulations. In the early 1930s, the members of Brit Habirionim group disrupted a British-sponsored census, sounded the shofar in prayer at the Western Wall despite a British prohibition, held a protest rally when a British colonial official visited Tel Aviv, and tore down Nazi flags from German offices in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. When the British arrested hundreds of its members the organization effectively ceased to exist. He believed that the Holocaust was a 'tragic but almost inevitable outcome of Jewish indifference to their destiny.' As early as 1923, Greenberg "envisioned and warned of the destruction of European Jewry." Following Israeli independence in 1948, he joined Menachem Begin's Herut movement. In 1949, he was elected to the first Knesset. He lost his seat in the 1951 elections. After the Six-Day War he joined the Movement for Greater Israel, which advocated Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank.
Awards
In 1947, 1954 and 1977, Greenberg was awarded the Bialik Prize for literature.
In 1957, Greenberg was awarded the Israel Prize for his contribution to literature.
In 1976, the Knesset held a special session in honor of his eightieth birthday.
