If Edward R. Murrow (American broadcast journalist and World War II correspondent) had been broadcasting from the Warsaw Ghetto on April 19, 1943, he may well have started his broadcast with three words: “This is Warsaw.” For as London was to England, as Paris was to France, and as Washington, D.C. was to America, Warsaw is the capitol of Poland. The University of Warsaw—founded in 1816—was the largest university in Poland, and during the uprising was part of the resistance, even though at the time it was being used as a German military barracks. The Partisans had been smuggling guns into the ghetto since January 23, and had already managed to stop a Nazi caravan of weapons intended for their troops in 1942. Vilna poet and songwriter Hirsh Glik had written the song Shtil De Nacht (“The Night is Silent”) to celebrate the heroic woman Partisan Vitka Kemperor who blew up that caravan. Kemperor would survive the war and later marry Vilna poet and Partisan Abba Kovner and move to the newfound state of Israel, whose Independence Day is also today—April 19, 1948.

So in memory of Ed Murrow, This is Warsaw~

Culture of Protest radio host Dick Flacks writes, “Today, April 19 marks the 75th anniversary of a profound episode in the history of human resistance—the armed (poorly) rising of the 40,000 Jews who remained in the Warsaw Ghetto after years of mass deportation to death camps and incredible privation. The heroic battle against the Nazi occupiers lasted 6 weeks and virtually all who fought were killed. The Yom Hashoah commemoration (April 7-8 this year) has recently tended to foreground Jewish resistance to the Nazis. Six million did not go to their deaths passively.” Thank you, Dick~

We are here to remember their heroism, tell their story, sing their songs and recite their poems.

The first words will be from the Jewish Armed Resistance Organization, their manifesto to the Poles. The text was issued during the first days of the Battle of the Warsaw Ghetto in April 1943 (On the 5th day of the battle):

“Poles, citizens, soldiers of Freedom! Through the din of German cannons, destroying the homes of our mothers, wives and children; through the noise of their machine guns, seized by us in the fight against the cowardly German police and SS men; through the smoke of the Ghetto, that was set on fire, and the blood of its mercilessly killed defenders, we, the slaves of the Ghetto, convey heartfelt greetings to you.

We are well aware that you have been witnessing breathlessly, with broken hearts, with tears of compassion, with horror and enthusiasm, the war that we had been waging against the brutal occupant these past few days.

Every doorstep in the Ghetto has become a stronghold and shall remain a fortress until the end. All of us will probably perish in the fight, but we shall never surrender!

We, as well as you, are burning with the desire for vengeance. It is a fight for our freedom, as well as yours; for our human dignity and national honour, as well as yours! We shall avenge the gory deeds of Oswiecim [Auschwitz], Treblinka, Belzec and Majdanek.

Long live the fraternity of blood and weapons in a fighting Poland.

Long live freedom

Death to the hangmen and the killer

We must continue our mutual struggle against the occupant until the very end.”

Brandeis University literary scholar Susanne Klingenstein writes, “On September 29, 1939, the Germans arrived in Warsaw. Harassment and brutalization of Jews in the streets and in their homes began right away. On October, 12, 1940, the eve of Yom Kippur, the Germans announced the establishment of a ghetto in the old Jewish section in the north of Warsaw. Within a year it was filled to capacity: in March 1941, some 450,000 Jews were living in just 14,000 residential buildings, seven or eight people to a room.

On July 22, 1942, the day of Tisha b’Av, the deportations began. Within 45 days, 253,000 Jews had been killed or deported to Treblinka. On September, 12, 1942, the Germans mysteriously stopped their Aktion (initiative).

Stunned and incapable of feeling anything, the 73,000 remaining Jews came out of their hiding places. Slowly their souls filled with rage. Two resistance groups reorganized themselves, tried to buy weapons from the Polish underground and got ready to fight.

On January 18, 1943, the Germans returned. They were in for a surprise: They were shot at by the Jews, suffered casualties and did not manage to fill their quota of 8,000 Jews. This had never happened before.

The Germans withdrew and did not return until April 19. The Jews were ready for them. Some 750 poorly armed Jews attacked the 2,000 well-nourished Germans who moved into the ghetto with tanks, cannons and flame-throwers.

In the afternoon of the first day of fighting, two boys climbed onto a roof and unfurled two flags — a red and white one for Poland and a blue and white one for the Jews, raising the fighting spirit of the Jews. It took the Germans three weeks to defeat the Jews.

On May 16, it was all over. At 8:15 that evening, the Germans blew up the grand synagogue on Tlomackie Street, a symbolic gesture that signified the end of the Jews of Warsaw. The commander of the Aktion reported to his superior in Cracow: ‘The former Jewish quarter of Warsaw no longer exists.’ Of the remaining Jews, 17,000 had been killed on the spot; 7,000 were sent to Treblinka, and 42,000 were sent to Majdanek, near Lublin.

The news that Jews had taken up arms against the Germans was of enormous moral and psychological importance to the Jews living under Nazi rule and left a legacy of courage that reverberates to this day.”

Thank you so much, Susanne~

The first poem that addresses this legacy was written by Anglo-American poet W.H. Auden in March, 1939, Refugee Blues, a poem I recently set to music: Auden’s poem is in Yad Vashem in Israel, alongside Zog Nit Keynmol by Hirsh Glik.

Refugee Blues Poem
by WH Auden; music by Ross Altman

Say this city has ten million souls,
Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:
Yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us.

Once we had a country and we thought it fair,
Look in the atlas and you’ll find it there:
We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.

In the village churchyard there grows an old yew,
Every spring it blossoms anew:
Old passports can’t do that, my dear, old passports can’t do that.

The consul banged the table and said,
“If you’ve got no passport you’re officially dead”:
But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.

Went to a committee; they offered me a chair;
Asked me politely to return next year:
But where shall we go to-day, my dear, but where shall we go to-day?

Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said;
“If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread”:
He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.

Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky;
It was Hitler over Europe, saying, “They must die”:
O we were in his mind, my dear, O we were in his mind.

Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,
Saw a door opened and a cat let in:
But they weren’t German Jews, my dear, but they weren’t German Jews.

Went down the harbour and stood upon the quay,
Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:
Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.

Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;
They had no politicians and sang at their ease:
They weren’t the human race, my dear, they weren’t the human race.

Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,
A thousand windows and a thousand doors:
Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours.

Stood on a great plain in the falling snow
Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro:
Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.

Poem by W.H. Auden, 1939

Music by Ross Altman © 2018 Grey Goose Music (BMI)

Shtil De Nacht

Written by Hirsh Glik, a poet living in the Vilna Ghetto

The starry night is silent,
And the frost is sharp and crisp;
Do you remember when I taught you
To hold a pistol in your hand.

A girl, a short coat and a beret,
Holding a pistol firmly in her hand,
A girl with a face as soft as velvet
Guards the enemy’s caravan.

She aimed, fired and found her mark
With her little pistol,
A truck full of ammunition
She stopped with one shot.

At dawn, creeping out of the woods
With snow garlands clinging to her hair,
She was encouraged with her tiny victory
For our new, free generation.

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising — Oral History

By Benjamin (Ben) Meed

Born: Warsaw, Poland

Describes the burning of the Warsaw ghetto during the 1943 ghetto uprising [Interview: 1990]

— US Holocaust Memorial Museum – Collections

Transcript

The entire sky of Warsaw was red. Completely red. But the flames were so concentrated around the whole ghetto that it illuminated the whole city. The next week, the same week was Palm Sunday. I couldn’t be anymore in the…in the…with my parents, in the hiding [place]. I walked out on that Palm Sunday and I went to Plac Krasinski where there was a church, a very old church, and I felt that my safest place is in the church. I went to that church and I attended the Mass and the priest spoke. Not a word was mentioned that across the street people are fighting, dying by the hundreds, and fire. I was just like a good Christian listening to the whole sermon. Then it is, uh, traditional in Poland that when the, after the services, the priest goes out in front of the church and he greets the parish…the people, probably is practiced here in every country the same way, but in Poland it is a traditional thing. And he greeted all the Poles and across the street was a carousel with a playground and the music was playing and the carousel was…the people took the children on the carousel, beautifully dressed. Sunday. Palm Sunday. And…uh…music was playing and I was standing in that group watching the other side of the block, of that burning ghetto. From time to time we heard screaming, “Look. Look. People are jumping from the roofs.” Others will make remarks, uh, “Jews are frying.” That’s just a free translation from Polish. But I never heard any sympathy voices. Maybe there were people who looked in a different way, but I never heard it. And it was very heartbreaking for me that here I am, helpless, I can do nothing, and I gotta see and watch, and I cannot even protest, I cannot even show my anger. Sometimes I felt in tho…in there that I have to do something physically, even have to pay with my life, start screaming, but I didn’t do it. I didn’t scream. I didn’t do anything. I just was hurt. But that scene will probably remain with me for all my life.

Ben was one of four children born to a religious Jewish family. Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. After the Germans occupied Warsaw, Ben decided to escape to Soviet-occupied eastern Poland. However, he soon decided to return to his family, then in the Warsaw ghetto. Ben was assigned to a work detail outside the ghetto, and helped smuggle people out of the ghetto—including Vladka (Fagele) Peltel, a member of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB), who later became his wife. Later, he went into hiding outside the ghetto and posed as a non-Jewish Pole. During the Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1943, Ben worked with other members of the underground to rescue ghetto fighters, bringing them out through the sewers and hiding them on the “Aryan” side of Warsaw. From the “Aryan” side of Warsaw, Ben witnessed the burning of the Warsaw ghetto during the uprising. After the uprising, Ben escaped from Warsaw by posing as a non-Jew. Following liberation, he was reunited with his father, mother, and younger sister.

This next song will be sung by the Chairmentsh of So Cal Arbeter Ring/ Workmen’s Circle~ Ruth Judkowitz, who performed it at our 75th Anniversary Commemoration:

Unter Dayn Vayse Shter’n

(text: Avraham Sutskever; melody: Abraham Brudno)

Yiddish:

Unter dayne vayse shtern
Shtrek tsu mir dayn vayse hant.
Mayne verter zaynen trern
Viln ruen in dayn hant.

Ze, es tunklt zeyer finkl
In mayn kelerdikn blik.
Un ikh hob gornit keyn vinkl
Zey tsu shenken dir tsurik.

Un ikh vil dokh, got getrayer
Dir fartroyen mayn farmeg.
Vayl es mont in mir a fayer
Un in fayer-mayne teg.

Nor in kelern un lekher
Veynt di merderishe ru.
Loyf ikh hekher, ibqer dekher
Un ikh zukh: vu bistu, vu?

Nemen yogn mikh meshune
Trep un hoyfin mit gevoy.
Heng ikh a geplaste strune
Un ikh zing tsu dir azoy:

Unter dayne vayse shtern
Shtrek tsu mir dayn vayse hant.
Mayne verter zaynen trern
Viln ruen in dayn hant.

English (literal translation)

Under Your white stars
Stretch to me Your white hand.
My words are tears,
Wanting to rest in Your hand.

See, they twinkle very darkly
In my cellar-beaten view;
And I have no place
How to send them back to You.

And I will, dear God,
Confide in you these of mine
While in me a fire grows
And on fire are my days.

But in cellars and holes
Cries the murderous quiet
I fly higher, over rooftops
And I search: Where are You? Where?

Something strange hunts me
Stairs and courtyards are on chase
I hang as a broken bow-string
And I sing to You this way:

Under Your white stars
Stretch to me Your white hand.
My words are tears,
Wanting to rest in Your hand.

English (free translation)

Who are you that in your hands is my death and is my life?
Listen, my voice breaks toward you and you are deaf to me.
See, my day ends, expires, and darkness falls.
My soul, no-one knows. Would you know it?

A silence rises to you from streets and houses.
All my life explodes in strength for my life is filled with dead.

And only graves know quiet here in this valley of tears
Would you dare to hear? A dead city mutes lamentation.

And silently pursuing me, all my city who’ve been slaughtered
And your silence strangles me. How can I carry my prayer to you?
Who are you that in your hands is my death and is my life?
Listen, my voice breaks toward you and you are deaf to me.

Note: (from Mlotek and other sources) This song was written in the Vilno ghetto, words by Avraham Sutskever (1913-); music by Abraham Brudno (?-1944). It was first presented in the ghetto theater in the play ” Di Yogenish in Fas” (the hunt in the barrel, a pun on Diogenes in a barrel.) It was first sung by Zlate Katcherginsky. After the liquidation of the ghetto, Suskever joined the partisan fighters. He survived the war and lives in Israel where he edits the literary quarterly “Di Goldene Keyt”. The composer, Abraham Brudno, following the liquidation of the ghetto, was deported to a German concentration camp in Estonia, where he died. YW

Copyright © United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

Remember The Warsaw Ghetto (Drop D 3rd Fret in “F”)

Words and Music by Ross Altman © 2018 Grey Goose Music (BMI)

They herded us into the ghettos
Vilna, lodz and warsaw
Stepping stones to treblinka
Auschwitz, sorbibor and dachau
They came to liquidate us
Every mother’s son and daughter
But we refused to be led
Like lambs to the slaughter.

Chorus:

The warsaw ghetto uprising
We shall always remember
April 19 to may 16~ 1943
Burns like a glowing ember.

It was on the eve of passover
Their troops amassed at the gate
They thought it would take only a day
But we survived for twenty-eight
Poorly armed with guns and rifles
The partisans smuggled in
We fought from every rooftop and
Doorway~ defiant to the end. (ch)

SPOKEN:

One Living Word

No more willful silences.
No more verbal contact, he who loved to listen to so many will never again hear his own voice among them.

He will sit with his friends over talk from now on under constraint.
The talk. The thoughts. The friends.
And as he listens through the secret door he will turn his inner ear to the dark mumur: Son of man,
all this and all this never was and never will be
as good as one living word.

-Abba Kovner

Some escaped through sewerlines
And others undercover
They murdered all the rest of us
To live in poems by abba kovner
And the anthem zog nit keynmol
By vilna’s songwriter hirsh glik
When news of our doomed resistance
Reached their ears warsaw became heroic. (final chorus)

Dear Hirsh
“Zog Nit Keynmol” is Yiddish for “Never say…. that you have reached the end of the road”. These are the opening words to the poem that you wrote in the Vilna Ghetto during the horrendous times for Jews in 1943.

Yet your poem contains words of hope, heroism and inspiration for the partisans and the inmates of your ghetto. When you read “Zog Nit Keynmol” on the street corner to your friend Rachel Margolis, she matched it to the music of the 1938 Russian march by the Dmitri and Daniel Pokrass.

http://elirab.me/the-legacy-of-the-partisan-song/

GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK~

Ross Altman has a PhD in Modern Literature from SUNY-Binghamton (1973); belongs to Local 47 (AFM); heads the Santa Monica Traditional Folk Music Club; writes for FolkWorks and he may be reached at greygoosemusic@aol.com