Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Jiddish Partizan Marsh: Song of the Partisans

Yesterday's post on mandolins and anti-fascist resistance in Warsaw has prompted this response from Ruin Gebirk in Berlin:

"I read your story about the mandoline, it was interesting, I too have a strong interest in the jewish resistance history and I am specially fascinated by the "little" stories. When I was young we were singing the jiddish songs of Hirsh Glik and others... since I know about your electronical music background I wanted to share my new track with you: I called it jiddish partizan marsh, it's based on the melody of Sog nit kejnmal als du gejst den letztn".

Nice one, check out the track here: http://soundcloud.com/gebirk/jiddish-partizan-marsh

There's more detail on the song from which this track's melody comes in this article on Music of the Holocaust: 'News of the Warsaw ghetto uprising of April 1943 inspired the Vilna poet and underground fighter Hirsh Glik (ca. 1921–ca. 1944) to write Never Say That You Have Reached the Final Road (the Yiddish title is often shortened to Zog nit keynmol). With a melody taken from a march tune composed for the Soviet cinema, the song spread quickly beyond the ghetto walls and was soon adopted as the official anthem of the Jewish partisans. Glik was later deported to an Estonian labor camp and is presumed to have lost his life during an escape attempt. His song remains a favorite at Holocaust commemoration ceremonies worldwide'. This site also includes a recording of the track - which is also known as the Song of the Partisans - by Betty Segal.

2 comments:

bob said...

Wonderful! Thanks Gebirk.

. said...

Yes something sweet about these tunes being played around with in Berlin today - the Third Reich was a catastrophe but it didn't quite last 1000 years did it?!