[1] Itzi-Yehuda Lubes or Lobes (later Yitzhak Lamdan) was born in 1899 in Mlynov, Russia (now Mlyniv, Ukraine).

In 1920, after his parents’ home was destroyed and his brother was killed, Lamdan immigrated to Mandatory Palestine as part of a socialist youth group in what has come to be known in Zionist history as the Third Aliyah.

The poem was hugely influential, creating the seed for what became the Masada myth, but the latter aspect was left out in its mainstream Zionist reception and interpretation.

[3] According to literary scholar and cultural historian David G. Roskies, Lamdan's poem even inspired the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto.

[4] From 1954 until 1983, the Ramat Gan Municipality, in conjunction with the Hebrew Writers Association in Israel, awarded the annual Lamdan Prize in his memory, for literary works for children and youth.