Rikle Glezer

In 1941, when she was 16-years-old, Nazi Germany occupied the city, and deported Glezer and all other Jews to the Vilna Ghetto.

Rather than depicting Vilnius' beauty, however, Glezer’s lyrics tell of the grim reality of smuggling food under conditions of disease, exhaustion and starvation.

Glezer’s best-known song was the popular "S'iz geven a zumertog" ("It Was a Summer’s Day").

The simple and evocative lyrics were set to the melody of a popular Yiddish theatre song of the inter-war years, ‘Papirosn’ (Cigarettes), composed by Herman Yablokoff.

[4] In 1999, the song was recorded and sung by Israeli singer Chava Alberstein under the name "Zumer Tag".

She joined the Soviet partisans in the Rūdninkai forest south of Vilnius, as a fighter in the "Death to Fascism" regiment.

In December 1948, she emigrated to Israel with her family, including her husband who was also a former partisan, on the ship Nagba.

In 1996, Glezer, now going by her married name Kaplan, spoke about her experience to the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation.