The Song Remains – דאָס ליד איז געבליבן

The Song Remains

People of the Warsaw Ghetto merged with a map of the Nazi occupation of Poland

דאָס ליד איז געבליבן

Welcome to our collection of Yiddish poems with English translations from Nazi German occupied Poland. We’ll be publishing one new poem per week into 2027, so be sure to subscribe to get free weekly updates.

  • Alter Kacyzne (Alter-Sholem Katsizne)

    The sun shone brightly in a festive way:
    today is the king of Chelm’s birthday.
    He observes from the terrace on high
    if the folk with the new gift are drawing nigh.
    Here they come, here they come, the shoes made of gold
    forged of real ducats, ready to behold!
    The folk crafted this golden footwear
    for the king in pride and joy to wear.
    Whosoever encounters the king in passing
    would clear the way as was certainly fitting.

    Town records reveal that in Chelm’s environ
    at the same time of year it rains more often.
    The streets of Chelm were sodden in clay —
    how deep the mud is! – one need not even say!
    And the feet of Chelm earnestly trod
    from shabes to shabes in relentless wet mud.
    Who’s creeping by, then quietly stumbles?
    The king in his golden shoes bumbles.

    So Chelm gathered its top ministers,
    its chief editors, its main senators,
    cantors, judges, even rabbis clustered —
    the greatest assembly Chelm had ever mustered.
    There was nothing further to declare:
    the king his golden shoes must wear!
    His people paid and worked for them dearly
    to see the king shod in gold so clearly!
    And then? One small thing is still outstanding:
    in the mud the gold is entirely missing.
    They must be nothing if not cautious:
    the king must wear a pair of galoshes.

    But in order for the gold to stand out
    each galosh must have its front torn out,
    so the gold is perceived from far and wide
    to fill the hearts of Chelm with joy and pride.

    But on those days of mud to the ankle
    the king forgoes the holes paradoxical:
    the king, and too, his wife esteemed,
    may stuff the holes with straw, it is deemed.

    And there we see the Chelm court uniform:
    two high galoshes with holes in the front,
    the holes stuffed with plugs of straw
    and this is how the king heads off.

    Translated by Miri Koral

    (more…)

  • Alter-Sholem Kacyzne (Katsizne) (1885-1941) was born in Vilnius (Vilno) to a working-class family. Yiddish was his mameloshen or mother-tongue, but he taught himself Hebrew, Russian, German, Polish, and French. At age 14, he went to work in his uncle’s photography studio in Dnipro (Ekatrinoslav). He became a professional photographer, and documented Jewish life in Poland, Palestine, and North Africa. Many of his striking photographs are available online.

    Kacyzne is well known for his photography, literary works and plays, but lesser so for his poetry. He founded his own Yiddish literary journals, and also contributed to the Yiddish Forward, and a number of periodicals with Communist leanings including Literarishe Tribune, Der Fraynd, and Literatur.

    He lived in Dnipro, and later Warsaw where he became a good friend of Y L Perets. At the outbreak of the Second World War, he fled to Lviv (Lemberg), and as the Nazi armies advanced, fled further east to Ternipol, where he was tortured to death by Ukranian collaborators in July 1941.

    Sources:

  • Hinde Nayman

    Little things snowy white,
    round as tiny stars
    and sweet as sweet can be,
    like saccharine pearls for tea.

    Dearer than a king’s crown,
    and honey cake brown,
    dry morsels of a loaf
    measured by the ounce.

    Playthings in a corner –
    making quite a mixture
    of a feather duster
    next to a rag doll.

    And like the pealing of a bell
    my mama’s words in me knell
    in a regretful refrain:
    Lazy bones, you hungry again?

    Translated by Miri Koral

    (more…)

  • Moyshe Shimel (Maurycy Szymel)

    Don’t cry little boy, wipe away your tears, it will soon be good.
    We will heal the wounds that drip with blood.

    We stand alone in this wide world against the sun that sets
    Alone, alone with our pain and our poverty

    We must find consolation for me and for you
    And repair the walls and fix the door ourselves

    Let them frighten us with knives, beat us and rob
    We will patch up our pillows and fix our windows

    Once and twice and three times we were fooled
    We have time and patience, we can wait

    Don’t cry little boy wipe away your tears and be still
    We’ll fix the table, the chairs and the floor

    We’ll restore the house that they have burned
    New walls will shine white in the light of the sun

    Don’t cry little boy, clear your eyes for new brighter days
    Spring will find us and come back this way

    Because they will be chopped down like old rotten trunks
    The hands of those who have killed your father and mother

    1937

    (more…)

  • Hersh Veber

    Between tree and tree exists the sky,
    between sky and sky – stars
    (everything taking form must ignite and be extinguished…)
    leading up to houses along milky roads.
    Here – a reminder, there – the stone’s blue glow.

    (more…)

  • M Goldshteyn

    – For so long have my eyes been seeking,
    awaiting some letter of yours, my son –
    in the nights my heart was wakeful
    and quaking like a leaf in the wind.

    (more…)

  • Debora Vogel (Dvoyre Fogel)

    The sky’s rouge
    drew back
    beneath their steps
    overgrown with the sidewalks,
    mingled with the dust of asphalts.
    They entered the grey.

    (more…)

  • Debora Vogel (1900-1942) was born in Bursztyn (Burshtyn / Burštýn / Бурштин), then part of the Austiran Empire, now in Ukraine. During the First World War her family fled to Vienna (Wien) and then to Lwów (Lemberg / Lviv), where she spent most of her life. She studied philosophy and Polish literature and received a Ph.D in Philosophy in Kraków, and later taught and lectured on topics including psychology and Yiddish literature. She wrote poetry in German, Yiddish, and Polish. She had strong ties with the avant-garde artistic community, which strongly influenced her own work, which has been said be analogous to cubism and geometrical abstraction.

    She was murdered in Lwów with her husband and young son in the Great Action of August 1942.

    Sources:

  • Yakov (Dzhek) Gordon

    The sky today is a radiant
    pale blue
    and lamb-cloud white.
    The sun is smiling
    its last, sorrowful smile.

    (more…)

  • Misha Troyanov

    Above the Jewish street, a grey cloud hovers,
    spread like a dead horse across the sky.
    Friday is a day of hurry and yelling –
    Above the Jewish street, a grey cloud hovers,
    grey due to the sorrow
    that arises from the stinking gutters.
    A Jew with hungry eyes,
    his shoulders atremble at a shadowy gate,
    shouts and gesticulates:
    For sale! For sale — warm socks!
    And lads stand over baskets of rotten apples,
    women with bowed legs
    run around with garlic, with onions,
    their hands beseeching
    for the sake of a penny.
    From the butcher shops wafts the stench
    of entrails and spleens.
    A black funeral heads to the cemetery
    with clamor and screams.
    A Jew with swollen, decrepit boots
    splashes in the mud
    and huffs and schleps a heap of slaughtered fowl
    with twisted-together necks.
    Blind beggars stand near the gates,
    bang their canes and awaken
    the hard pavement.

    (more…)