Shadows - Songs from Testimonies, Vol. 3 audio CD with booklet (liner notes, lyrics with transliterations and translations)
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Side D contains original testimnonies' audio clips from the Fortunoff Video Archive, edited and mastered for this edition.
Includes unlimited streaming of Shadows - Songs from Testimonies, Vol. 3
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Geto, getunyu—געטאָ, געטוניו—Ghetto, My Dear Ghetto
Joseph W. was born in 1929 in Lodz, Poland. When the Nazi occupation began, he and his family were locked in the ghetto. One of Joseph’s brightest memories was of Jankele Herszkowicz (pronounced Yánkele Hershkóvitsh), who composed many songs in the Lodz Ghetto and was known as the ‘ghetto troubadour.’ “For everyone who came into the ghetto, he composed a song,” says Joseph, adding that “Jankele brought something extraordinary to the ghetto that was greater than medicine or anything else.”
Both Joseph W. and Herszkowicz were deported, first to Auschwitz and then to a slave labor camp in Braunschweig, Germany. There they probably worked at the Büssing truck factory, where many Lodz Jews were brought in 1944-45.
Jankele Herszkowicz wrote many songs that quickly gained popularity. Most were written in the Lodz ghetto, such as the more famous Rumkowski Chaim and Geto, getunyu. At Auschwitz-Birkenau, he only wrote one song, Shtubuneltsto, presented in this series on the album Shray, Hertsele, Shray!— Songs from Testimonies, Volume 2.
Herszkowicz survived the war and the postwar massacres in Poland. Although he considered the option at some point, he never emigrated to Israel, even in the wake of the mass exodus that followed Władysław Gomułka’s antisemitic politics. Joseph suggests that this was perhaps because Herszkowicz’s wife was not Jewish. The Ghetto troubadour took his own life in 1972. “Did he sing in Poland after the war? Perhaps at the beginning, but afterwards—with whom? Everyone eventually left,” says Joseph.
Herszkowicz’s two sons passed on their father’s manuscripts to Joseph, as they were close friends. In his testimony, Joseph said that he wanted to publish the material, but we cannot verify whether this publication took place. Many of Herszkowicz’s songs survived through the rare recording of oral performances of survivors, and most of these were saved and preserved thanks to Gila Flam’s seminal research. The latter became the source for the 2005 record by the Brave Old World band, Dus gezang fin geto Lodzh (Song of the Lodz Ghetto).
References:
Gila Flam, Singing for Survival: Songs of the Lodz Ghetto, 1940-45 (Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992).
Brave Old World, ‘Dus gezang fin geto Lodzh’ / Song of the Lodz Ghetto. Music Edition Winter & Winter, Munich, Germany, 2005. LC02829
1. Nisht zorgn in nisht klern,
S’vet(a) haynt(a) git nokh vern.
S’vet nokh kartofl oy(e)kh zayn.
Men iz shoyn kurev-meykekh
Yontev vet men esn leykekh,
Trinkn fun gropn Karmel vayn.
Der vos hot, vet esn beharkhove.
Der vos nisht—vet grizhen a bayn, oy, oy, oy,
Refrain:
Geto, getunyu, getuchna kochana.
Ty ż taka maluszka i taka szubrana,
Der vos hot a hant a shtarker,
Der vos trugt af zikh a marke,
Krigt fun shenstn in fun bestn,
Afile a postn oykh dem grestn,
Ven di bist inteligent
Un a tsent,
Draysti zikh arim vi a mes,
Un a broyt, un adres,
In di zingst of english zikh “O, yes!” (Oy, es)
2. Meydlekh zikh ale sheymen,
Nisht ka’ shminke, nish’ ka’ breymen,
Nisht kayn tabarin, nish’ ka’ fayf.
Nisht rush, ka’ undelatsye
Nisht ka’ mitik, kayn kolatsye,
Zey hobn tsi vashn nisht kayn zayf.
Nie, zmartwione zayt nisht tshitshi-pulkes.
Nor ale zingt mir mier der refrayn, oy, oy, oy,
Refrain:
Geto, getunyu, getuchna kochana.
Ty ż taka maluszka i taka szubrana,
Der vos hot a hant a shtarker,
Der vos trugt af zikh a marke,
Krigt fun shenstn in fun bestn,
Afile a postn oykh dem grestn,
Ven di bist inteligent
Un a tsent,
Draysti zikh arim vi a mes,
Un a broyt, un adres,
In di zingst of english zikh “O, yes!” (Oy, es).
1. Don’t worry and don’t fret:
Things will be fine again here.
There will even be potatoes!
The day is almost upon us.
We’ll have sponge cake for the holidays
And drink Carmel wine made from barley.
Those who have it, will eat in abundance,
And those who don’t, will gnaw the bone.
Refrain:
Ghetto, little ghetto, my beloved ghetto!
You are so little; you are so dirty.
Whoever has a strong arm,
Whoever wears a ‘badge,’
Gets the nicest and the best of everything,
Even a position of the highest order.
But if you’re an intellectual,
Without a cent,
You drag yourself around like a corpse
Without bread and without an address,
And sing to yourself in English: “Oh yes!”
The girls are all ashamed:
No make-up, no eyelashes,
No armchair, no lipstick!
No rouge, no perm,
No lunch, no dinner,
No soap to wash with.
But don’t get upset, floozies (literally, ‘tits and legs’)
But everyone sing the refrain along with me!
Refrain.
credits
from Shadows - Songs from Testimonies, Vol. 3,
released January 19, 2024
Music and Lyrics: Jankele Herszkowicz. Arranged by D. Zisl Slepovitch.
Performed by Joseph W., testimony hvt.2852.
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