Israel Kaplan and his wife
Lea Greenstein 
Abaout Israel read here; https://shalomke.wordpress.com/my-parents/remembering-parents/- 
Lea Greenstein was born on 2.8 1903 in the small town Seda (Siad) in Northwest Lithuania, where she spent her younger years. She attended the first Yiddish middle school, located in Ukmerge (Vilkomir) and then moved to Kaunas (Kovno) where she worked as a secretary in an orphanage. Later she received nurses training and worked in the local Jewish hospital. In Kovno she increasingly joined and was part of various literary circles, and in 1931 she married the teacher and writer Israel Kaplan. Two children were born to the couple; Shalom in 1933 and Yehudith in 1937.
Lea Greenstein published her first poem – “Ich Vart” (I wait) – in 1930. Thereafter she published poems in local Jewish papers and journals, which after the world war were partially traced in Israeli archives. Her poems are suffused with a deep lyrical mood, and they sensitively observe the human condition. At the time, they were noted favorably in reviews and they were much appreciated in literary circles. Some of her letters that have survived from the 1930s speak of her wide interests in literature and art and express serious reflections concerning these. They also indicate how she was torn between the duties of a housewife and her desire for independence.
In 1940, Lithuania was occupied by the Soviet armies. Lea Greenstein’s last poem reveals the support and enthusiasm with which she greeted the Soviets, using the image of an itinerant Gypsy woman who will now give birth in a clean bed and not in a barren field. Her joy was short lived. In summer 1941 German armies occupied Lithuania and she together with her family, like all the Jews, were imprisoned in the ghetto. Less than a year later, Israel Kaplan was deported to the Riga ghetto and Lea was left to fend alone for herself and her children.
For the next two and one half years, Lea Greenstein worked in a felt factory outside the ghetto. Miraculously, she and her small family survived several Aktions until, at the beginning of 1944, she smuggled her seven-year old daughter out from the ghetto and sometime later her son as well. Both children were hidden with Lithuanian people.
Lea Greenstein perished when the Germans liquidated the ghetto in July 1944. Her daughter Yehudith was denounced by the people who had first sheltered her and was killed. Israel Kaplan managed to survive in several German death camps and after the war was reunited in Israel with his son Shalom.
On the end of 2010  a  publication that contains Lea Greenstein’s original eleven surviving poems, as written in Yiddish, its Hebrew translation, several reviews and essays dealing in detail with her life and poetry, and a selection of her letters has been published. The book bears the title “To Flicker,” based on a citation from one of L.G’s letters to the writer Nathan Greenblat (Goren).
(From the preface of “To Flicker”):
May this book be a memorial to a brave young woman, devoted mother and poet, whose young life was snuffed out by an evil hand.
……………………………………..
Further details about her life, especially the final years, are in Shalom Eilati’s autobiography, Crossing the River, The University of Alabama Press, 2008 .
Lea  Greenstein – Poems
(Translation by Vivian London, Jerusalem 2012 – Final Draft)
I’m Waiting!  (p. 12)
 I’m waiting for you, you have yet to come.
I know the day is still so far away.
How good it is to think about the flowers
That will blossom with your steps.
I’m waiting for you, you will surely come;
I know that you are still far, far away.  My heart
Is full of flowers now, — missing you
I see you in the silence
 
Wanderlust  (p. 14)
The flame of my passion to see you, world,
Has been kindled, to see you large as life
To walk across your breadth,
Drink up your sorrow
And recklessness.
 
Now I’ll spread my steps
On strange and distant sidewalks
On long and narrow byways.
 
My eyes will climb up rows of tall buildings,
Ramble all alone on earth, and wildly,
With pain or joy, my teeth
Will bite deep into my own flesh
And let the wind caress me;
 
I shall swoon, swoon for you, world,
At how wanton you are,
How beautiful.
 
Lost in longing is the forest (p.18)
Lost in longing is the forest
The day of joy has seeped away.
Trees are woven with the night
Curling inward to themselves.
Birds have flown to distant suns.
Wind and storm possess the woods
Whoo – shoo  –  whoo  – shoo   No time
For longing now:
Now is the hour to rejoice in creation
The birth of something new
Before it is lost.
 
 
 Tears  (p.20)
How I envy those
Who can weep out loud.
Whose tears flow not inside
Deep within their eyes,
But are borne like airy blooms          
Floating far and pouring out to blend
With the world’s clamor.
My tears lie deep inside me
Squirming and scratching at me               
To the point of pain.                              
If I had a God now
Even an imaginary one
I would pray to him to make my tears         
Flow, flow, silent and sad.
 
Blood in the Spring (p. 24)
Blood in the Spring.
Blood on the sun…
A drop of blood glides
On the pure white blossom
— Blood!
The tree shakes itself:
I know rain on my body
Now – blood?!
By whose hand?
From whose heart?
– Murderous hand.
Blood of pure