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.
Sirens cut the air in two a late whore hurries down a side street weary bodies wake from here to China and homeless streetcars ring in the day
So how, in what way can I praise you sadness lives long in your street miles clouds hang gray over your red gates from chimneys smoking up the sky
Seldom a ray sneaks in from somewhere people run, rushing as if chasing someone pale women – sick birds lurk on side streets and days of wrath arrive in convoy
Łódź you’re called the Polish Manchester you brag about your factory streets while in your cellars and your attics your sons and daughters choke with worry and defeat
Motl Kozlovski (1910-1944?) was born in Przysucha (Pshiskhe). He had a traditional education, and worked as a tailor. He published poems in a number of journals. He was deported from the Łódź ghetto, and died in Auschwitz.
Don’t cry child autumn will not live long in our land he is like a poor man who is blind the wind leads him by his hand Give the autumn like a good coin away to sorrow He will cry for joy until he comes to the frosted wintry door The summer has bright eyes by day the sun and by night the moon The winter – a beautiful faced old man with a white beard spread out over his knees So give the Autumn a gift of your sadness
Khayim Semiatitski (1908-1943) was born in Tykocin into a rabbinic family, and was ordained as a rabbi, but never assumed an official position. He moved to Warsaw, and began to write poetry, poems, stories, and critical reviews which were published in a number of newspapers and literary journals.
His book Tropns Toy (Dewdrops) won the Y L Peretz award of the PEN club of Yiddish writers in Warsaw. He believed that the task of the artist is to polish the Creator’s work.
When the Nazis occupied Warsaw, he fled to Białystok, and later to Vilnius. He was murdered during the liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto in September 1943.
Sarah had nearly completed translation of this collection when she died. We will continue to publish her translations every week. Miri Koral has offered to step in as editor, and complete any unfinished work. We extend our profound thanks to Miri for helping to complete this work.
Sarah was born on 18 August 1927, in Brooklyn, New York. She grew up speaking Yiddish in the home and only learned English when she went to school. She was one of the last native secular Yiddish speakers alDr Koralive before her death in September 2024.
Sarah would later gain her doctorate from Yeshiva University in Psychology while raising children with her husband, Itzik Moskovitz. After attaining her Ph.D, she would teach at California State University Northridge at a time when very few women were in academia.
As part of her work, she set up a network of support groups for child survivors of the Holocaust. This idea would spread globally as a way for child survivors to work through their shared trauma together.
Sarah was an avid poet herself and has published several collections of her work: Kumt Tzum Tish / Come to the Table, the separate Holocaust anthologyPoetry in Hell, and her translation of The Song Remains.
Sarah credited The Song Remains translation project with extending her life for several years before her death on 1 September 2024, at age 97, a year after Itzik’s death in 2023. Both are remembered by their children; Debrah, Ruth, and Dave, by the many child survivors and others whose lives she touched, and by Sarah’s project; The Song Remains.
Sarah was a poet, and this is a poetry site, so we thought it only fitting to include one of her last poems, “Hands”.
Hands
Sarah Traister Moskovitz
I was standing at the sink peeling garlic when I remembered the smell of garlic on my mother’s hands when I was small, hands that brushed the hair back from my forehead with a light touch that held my face up as she looked into my eyes, and called me “boobaleh”, that took my spoon to coax me to eat just one more “far dayne zise beindelakh” for your sweet little bones. Her hands were soft and small never forcing, never threatening, warm sepals around the bud of me.
My father’s hands held threat; a yank, a pull, a slap, a fist were always possible. The same long fingers pointing out the world, the beauty of clouds, sunsets, plants and animals, the magic of picture books and alpha-bet could turn to iron pliers ripping, shaming, hurting crushing the bud of me.
My mother did laundry by hand. She stirred mushroom-barley and chicken noodle soup lifted the cover on pot roasts, cored apples, peeled potatoes chopped herring in a wooden bowl. On Fridays she mopped the kitchen floor and got down on her knees to scrub the bad spots and thank God for a home, then got up to make a path of Yiddish newspapers full of blood and death from overseas for us to step on as we walked safe across the wet, clean floor. And if my father wasn’t home she listened to Stella Dallas, another orphan reassured that Stella’s troubles were worse than hers.
I married a guy with hands more powerful than my father’s; Itzik has the golden hands that can fix and build anything. He built our first television set, a trailer to go camping in with young children, years later a room for grown-up married kids. His hands have endless patience and dexterity to unravel knots fasten clasps, put keys on rings and unjam anything that’s stuck under a hood. His hands are safe and good to me… like my mother’s; making soup, making love, making a garden… making life.
Every evening we meet on a busy street as he scurries along like a beggar along walls and his eyes carry sorrow and heavy it weighs in his silent hands
Not for nothing do childish cries sound against my blue windows all night.
In the morning a mother tossed her 6-day old child on to the corner of Karmelicka Street Like a wet and broken cradle the child lay on the corner at the neck of the street. Bearded men came well dressed women and even the day that bent over like a blond waiter with a gilded tray with white napkins in hand and distributed the joy of July
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