Yiddish Songs of the Shoah: A Source Study Based on the Collections of Shmerke Kaczerginski

280 Pages·2014·17.48 MB·English

by  Michael Presky

UCLA
UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Title
Yiddish Songs of the Shoah: A Source Study Based on the Collections of Shmerke
Kaczerginski
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https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6x72f9t5
Author
Werb, Bret
Publication Date
2014

Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation
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Yiddish Songs of the Shoah

A Source Study Based on the Collections of Shmerke Kaczerginski

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the

requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy

in Ethnomusicology

by

Bret Charles Werb

2014
Copyright ©
Bret Charles Werb
2014
ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION
Yiddish Songs of the Shoah
A Source Study Based on the Collections of Shmerke Kaczerginski
by
Bret Charles Werb
Doctor of Philosophy in Ethnomusicology
University of California, Los Angeles, 2014
Professor Timothy Rice, Chair

This study examines the repertoire of Yiddish-language Shoah (or Holocaust) songs
prepared for publication between the years 1945 and 1949, focusing its attention on the work of
the most influential individual song collector, Shmerke Kaczerginski (1908-1954). Although a
number of initiatives to preserve the “sung folklore” of the Nazi ghettos and camps were
undertaken soon after the end of the Second World War, Kaczerginski’s magnum opus, the
anthology Lider fun di getos un lagern (Songs of the Ghettos and Camps), published in New
York in 1948, remains unsurpassed to this day as a resource for research in the field of Jewish
folk and popular music of the Holocaust period.
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Chapter one of the dissertation recounts Kaczerginski’s life story, from his
underprivileged childhood in Vilna, Imperial Russia (present-day Vilnius, Lithuania), to his
tragic early death in Argentina. It details his political, social and literary development, his
wartime involvement in ghetto cultural affairs and the underground resistance, and postwar
sojourn from the Soviet sphere to the West. Kaczerginski’s formative years as a politically
engaged poet and songwriter are shown to have underpinned his conviction that the repertoire of
salvaged Shoah songs provided unique and authentic testimony to the Jewish experience of the
war.
The second chapter contextualizes Kaczerginski’s work by examining fourteen
contemporaneous anthologies, beginning with the hastily-compiled first Shoah songbook issued
in Bucharest within a month of the German surrender, and concluding with the politically
aborted, never published major study prepared in 1949 by the Soviet-Ukrainian music folklorist
Moshe Beregovski. The chapter compares the backgrounds and missions of each anthologist,
and includes tabulated and annotated content listings for each collection discussed.
The third chapter, a detailed study of Kaczerginski's Lider fun di getos un lagern,
anatomizes the book’s four main sections and argues that its contents were organized according
to a “narrative” structure. Interviews and correspondence with Kaczerginski’s friends,
colleagues and family-members inform a discussion of the author’s working methods and the
degree to which his background and cultural biases affected his collecting modus operandi. The
chapter also includes Kaczerginski’s introductory “Collector’s Remarks” provided in full English
translation for the first time, and a tabulated and annotated inventory of the anthology’s 235
songs and poems.
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Chapter four examines the musical genres favored by ghetto and camp songwriters. The
discussion encompasses original compositions as well as contrafacta (or parody) works modeled
after theater songs and popular dances such as the tango and the waltz. It also examines the use,
especially by Jewish partisan songwriters, of melodies drawn from the repertoire of the Soviet
mass song.
The final chapter considers the legacy of Kaczerginski’s life and work. While the
influence of his large collection has been pervasive—all subsequent anthologists of Yiddish
Holocaust songs have directly or indirectly mined Lider fun di getos un lagern for source
material—awareness of the central role he played in the preservation of the repertoire has
inevitably declined with the passage of time.

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The dissertation of Bret Charles Werb is approved.
Malcolm S. Cole
Jacqueline Cogdell DjeDje
Daniel M. Neuman
Timothy Rice, Committee Chair

University of California, Los Angeles
2014
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Dedication

To my parents
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Table of Contents

List of Tables.................................................................................................................................ix 
List of Figures.................................................................................................................................x 
Acknowledgements......................................................................................................................xiii 
Vita................................................................................................................................................xv 
Preface.............................................................................................................................................1 
Chapter I. A Partisan-Troubadour...................................................................................................6 
Chapter II. Fourteen Songbooks...................................................................................................36 
1. Mi-ma’amakim: folkslider fun lagers un getos in poyln 1939-1944 (Out of the Depths:
Folk Songs from the Camps and Ghettos of Poland, 1939-1944)..........................................36 
2. Zamlung fun katset un geto lider (Anthology of Songs and Poems from the Concentration
Camps and Ghettos)................................................................................................................40 
3. S’brent (It’s Burning)..........................................................................................................48 
4. Lider fun bialistoker geto (Songs from Białystok Ghetto).................................................50 
5. Ghetto-und KZ. Lieder aus Lettland und Litauen (Ghetto and Concentration Camp
Songs from Latvia and Lithuania)..........................................................................................53 
6. Undzer gezang (Our Song).................................................................................................58 
7. Dos gezang fun vilner geto (The Song of Vilna Ghetto)....................................................62 
8. Zog nisht keynmol az du geyst dem letstn veg (Never Say That You Have Reached
the Final Road)........................................................................................................................68 
9. Umkum fun der yidisher kovne (Destruction of Jewish Kovno).........................................70 
10. Fun letstn khurbn (From the Last Extermination)............................................................72 
11. Songs of the Concentration Camps from the Repertoire of Emma Schaver.....................78 
12. Min Hametzar: me-shirei ha-getaot (“In Distress”: Songs of the Ghettos)......................80 
13. Tsu zingen un tsu zogn (To Sing and to Recite)................................................................86 
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14. Yidishe folks-shafung in di teg fun der groyse foterlandisher milkhome
(Jewish Folk Creations in the Days of the Great Patriotic War).............................................90 
Chapter III. Lider fun di getos un lagern (Songs from the Ghettos and Camps)........................101 
Organization..........................................................................................................................111 
“Zog nit keynmol” (Never Say)......................................................................................112 
“Geto-lebn” (Ghetto Life)..............................................................................................113 
“Treblinke” (Treblinka)..................................................................................................116 
“Kontratak” (Counterattack)...........................................................................................119 
Chapter IV. Concerning Music...................................................................................................141 
Stats and Graphs...................................................................................................................142 
Newly-Composed Songs.......................................................................................................144 
Songs for the Ghetto Theater................................................................................................147 
In Folk-Style.........................................................................................................................157 
Tango....................................................................................................................................164 
Soviet Popular Song..............................................................................................................179 
Chapter V. Legacy......................................................................................................................195 
Appendix A. Yehuda Ayzman, Introduction to Mi-ma’amaḳim: folkslider fun lagers
un getos in poyln 1939-1944 (1945) (original Yiddish text)......................................................210 
Appendix B. Ayzman, Introduction (English translation)..........................................................215 
Appendix C. Collector’s Remarks: Kaczerginski’s Introduction to Lider fun di getos un lagern
(original Yiddish text).................................................................................................................218 
Appendix D. Lider fun di getos un lagern: Alphabetical Index to the Songs.............................230 
References...................................................................................................................................236 

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