© Josef Herman estate
Avram Stencl was born in Poland in 1897 and moved to Weimar Berlin in 1921, where he remained until. following the rise of Nazism, he was forced to flee, immigrating to England in 1936 and settling in Whitechapel, where he remained for more than forty years. Here, he launched his career as a Yiddish poet and edited the journal 'Loshn un Lebn' (‘Language and Life’), which in August 1943 included an article about Jewish painters with illustrations by Jankel Adler and Josef Herman – the latter was also an occasional contributor to the journal. Herman’s portrait of Stencl, carried out in 1946, testifies to their friendship, formed in London in this period.
Stencl was also a member of the shortlived Ohel (meaning ‘tent’)’ Centre, founded in late 1942 by the Polish-Jewish émigré brothers Alexander (1902‒1991) and Benzion Margulies (1890‒1955). Although by the 1950s Stencl had become a reclusive figure, as Monica Bohm Duchen has observed, he was (like Adler and Herman) ‘another pivotal figure in the perpetuation on British soil of European Yiddish culture’. David Mazower has noted how The Friends of Yiddish group met on Ben Uri premises for many years, providing a forum for native speakers of the language to meet, recite, sing and celebrate Yiddish literature with Stencl as presiding chairman. Stencl was also very interested in the visual arts and regularly reviewed Ben Uri exhibitions in Loshn un Lebn with contributions by Ben Uri members Moshe Oved, Beach, Pomerantz and other Ben Uri figures.
Stencl's papers have been archived by SOAS, University of London (The School of Oriental and African Studies).
