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.

  • 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!”

    — “Silly fool! You are mistaken
    in stopping me dead.
    Rolls and challahs I’ve been baking,
    my braid’s flour-dipped!

    Silly fool! I’m still a brunette,
    still dark as a crow!
    I was plucking geese and chickens,
    with feathers I’m crowned!

    Listen up, for my future spouse
    I prepared a feast —
    (and I laugh right in your face, loud,
    with desolate glee) —

    O! what a great celebration!
    O! a huge guest list!
    So impressive, I will tell you,
    was this wedding feast!”

    * * *

    One thing, though, I will not tell you:
    how my heart still cries
    that it was not you, never you
    to be husband mine!

    Translated by Miri Koral

    (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.

    While it stretches out towards the sun
    with a bright bridge and quiet horn,
    through dead holes of concrete
    my youthful years gaze back at me.

    She whom I loved here still lives in my heart,
    though her memory is long scraped away.
    And her daily distant gestalt
    contains a hollowness as after a blaze.

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

    Translated by Miri Koral

    (more…)

  • Miryem (Miriam) Ulinover

    A golden day mid-week —
    and what else would maidens seek?
    “Mushroom gathering we will go!”
    Baskets rustle and pink cheeks glow.
    They sing of joy and how bright the sun,
    they gather together and do a count:
    the magnate’s woods is divvied up.
    There’s chatter and a meeting’s set
    a plot of land for each girl’s basket,
    a plot of forest-loneliness.
    They join up, split and disperse.
    A forest seemingly empty, still,
    yet pulsing with life and truly filled!

    On quiet paths light quivers,
    and one girl seeks, grieves, and gathers:
    “Forest, give me a poisoned mushroom,
    my yearning heart is as a flaming ocean.
    He promised when he kissed my hair
    — ‘I’m leaving, but back in exactly one year!’

    And now the last day of the year has come!
    O, to perish from what is growing on
    verdant forest floors! Oh, the woe…
    He promised to be here by now.”
    Then, fluttering, the young heart feels
    compassion for its own misery,
    and pine trees rustle quietly.
    “And maybe, maybe it’s still to be?
    And he’ll yet be coming here for me?…
    Merely a leap year! Could this be?”

    Translated by Miri Koral

    (more…)

  • Y L Kohn

    Poverty could have totally defeated me
    (for being poor shrinks and dampens your soul)
    but for me the struggle to live hardened and armed me
    and I turned out of crooked darkness.

    (more…)

  • Hinde Nayman

    Between hills and above valleys stars
    glittered late into the night,
    and I arrived at a cottage that,
    like a shriveled mushroom,
    stood in the middle of the marketplace,
    its low threshold, a smooth stone,
    and its walls, enchanted and white.
    An eternal flame was lit inside,
    and a gilded bird had its wings outspread,
    and a flower grew in an earthen pot,
    its crown, like green velvet, stretched wide.
    But its soil had become parched,
    so with a pitcher in hand
    I watered the thirsty soil,
    and I watered the thirsty stem,
    and with the pitcher I sang
    a song of love and eternity.

    (more…)

  • Hershele (Hersh Danielewicz)

    Work, girlies, work!
    Work through day and night;
    sew up blouses, little frocks,
    then dress up to the nines!

    (more…)

  • Miryem (Miriam) Ulinover

    Time for me to get going…
    enough playing the fool:
    sitting around and hoping
    for a hot glance from you.

    (more…)

  • Roze Perets-Laks

    So good on a wintry blue dawn
    to sweetly stretch out
    one’s tired limbs
    and feel the tender embrace
    of the bed.
    Then the rosy velvet windowpanes
    are etched diamond-sharp
    and snowflakes so gentle
    fall near the window
    like little sleepy doves.
    And mixed up in one’s head are:
    silvery sounds of sleds,
    the late Spring field, the
    sour cherry tree scattered
    with white leaf buds and
    small boys already playing raffles.

    Translated by Miri Koral

    (more…)

  • Roze Perets-Laks

    Like flowing metal, the December sky.
    Now and then a last skinny leaf falls
    from the naked poplars
    juxtaposed
    like a black winged paw
    that with a wintry sound
    sinks into the snowy-brown
    rotting earth.
    Through the prism of endless melting
    no trace of a path shows
    no trace of a horizon.
    Just Matteus the war invalid
    with his rickety sticklike legs
    like stumps in a felled woods
    travelling step by step
    in his own “bond” with
    the tethered tatty donkey
    and the two of them
    two lost and sick nags
    seeking their home in empty streets
    in the vast December eve.

    Translated by Miri Koral

    (more…)

  • Roze Perets-Laks (1894-1941?) was born in Puławy (Pulavi), in the Lublin district of Poland. She studied dentistry in Warsaw, and later practised as a dentist there. During her time in Warsaw, she spent time in the home of her father’s cousin, the iconic Yiddish writer and poet I L Peretz, and later wrote a memoir about him, Arum Perets (Around Peretz). She married the sculptor Aleksander Laks in 1923, and moved to Vilna, where she lived until the Nazis murdered her in c1941. She published many poems in a variety of publications.

    Source: Congress for Jewish Culture