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.

  • 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…)

  • Borekh Olitzki (Baruch Olitzky)

    My simple sisters,
    my shepherdesses and seamstresses
    with their blond braids
    call to me from the sidewalks of Łodz
    to make benches and straw roofs.
    Bunched up on bundles
    of the September amber
    and the sway of dahlias,
    they stretch their hands in supplication
    to the dusky profile of my name:
    who will play on bleeding panpipes
    the sadness of captivated flocks
    and the groans of hinges
    when bad folk take the gold
    of wheat and corn?

    (more…)

  • Miryem (Miriam) Ulinover

    Cocky on your walk in town, hail
    to me on your way.
    You stop, and startled, you exclaim:
    “This girl’s hair turned gray!”

    (more…)

  • Hersh Veber

    Cover up the headlight – as you would a mirror.
    Strangle its far-reaching sunny flash.
    This is my city, it smiles amicably
    and doesn’t notice it’s a stone cemetery.

    (more…)