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.

  • Yisroel Shtern

              Night senses this in sleep:

    the streets cease to lament
    their desolation;
    a lad sings.

              So the night flings open eye and ear:

              out of the tight, rent jacket a song erupts;
    having torn up the soles of his shoes, he sings.

              He has nowhere to sleep:
    the gates tightly shut
    like his father’s grave;
    windows without light,
    like him, motherless.
    Sidewalk and human – both deathly poor,
    and oppressive, heavy vacancy is the city now, the city,
    like a newly built orphanage —

              No kitchen is assembled,
    no smidgeon of a pot,
    one looks here, there – for naught.
    There’s no compassionate nurse
    with an apronful of white goodness,
    no straw sacks tucked in corners,
    no readied bed –

              An orphan.
    With nowhere to sleep.

              Exiled from palace to palace,
    lugging a bellyful of hunger
    through the deserted-tedious emptiness
    of a great black city,
    (he, a dark little lad)
    lugs while not knowing the whys and wherefores;
    stares: from somewhere a mouse appears.
    Runs after it. Where did it go?
    He doesn’t yell: God, a bit of rest!
    His palate isn’t suited to prayer,
    having never been taught by his father,
    and he has no mother either,
    so from where should he draw tears?
    And rendered dumb, staring,
    miserable, silenced
    (like tin roofs,
    like panes of glass,
    like lime on houses)
    he wanders through every streetcorner
    and knows not what pokes his eye:
    a lantern?
    Perhaps the stars?
    And can’t hear
    the trumpeting in his left ear.

              Burdensome darkness dwells on his shoulders,
    a sack of sand hangs in his chest;
    he doesn’t know the whys and wherefores
    and the sack of sand is immense.

              Likewise, he perceives nothing while trudging, then feels:
    it’s so pleasant at his feet,
    down below is a festive time;
    earth soundly kisses his heels.

              Mindless, he lowers himself down
    and lies there, a person in the middle of the street,
    (like dead lips at a dead breast,
    his dark head on the black cobblestone)
    seemingly out of nowhere, singing a tune
    (have you heard about these boys in the synagogue’s anteroom?
    At old beggar’s fairs?
    Or from gypsies somewhere?)
    Doses and hugs the earth,
    Seethes – seethes – seethes – and sings from his sleep:

              “Good stones, soft stones,
    once I was a handsome one,
    looking my way now are none.
    And all but me are sleeping sound.
    If I don’t eat, no one sees,
    blackened now are my teeth,
    soft, soft, soft stones,
    once I was a handsome one,
    the handsomest all around,
    O, I’m nearly skin and bones,
    so why’re you silent, you hard stones?”

    The night hears this on the streets,
    the tin hears it on the roofs,
    the panes hear it in the windows,
    the bricks hear it on the houses:

    a little orphan sings.

    Translated by Miri Koral

    (more…)

  • Yisroel Shtern

    A little orphan in tattered clothes laughs,
    takes fright and races through streets and alleyways.

    He stole something.
    So he’s being chased.

    He dances through a fence, looks around:

    A stall, a calf. A calf with two eyes;
    they seem to say: the cow is gone,
    the big brown mother is gone.
    A shed. A dog. A dog with two eyes;
    they seem to shout! They beat us.
    God, they beat us!

    The little one trembles, unwraps and unwraps the little purse:
    A small mirror – eyeglasses – a copper penny.

    Phew! Oo-oo-oo!
    Fly-y-y-y!

    The little thief cavorts with the wind and the clouds
    and gifts them coin:
    a small mirror, eyeglasses, a copper penny.

    And laughs and laughs,
    stands there and laughs.

    That’s where he’s found.
    So he jumps through the fence and races,
    an orphan in tattered clothes,
    racing through the day, through the street, through the world.

    Translated by Miri Koral

    (more…)

  • Yisroel Shtern

    The world passes through their eyes
    as summer passes through fields.
    Just as the earth is taut with becoming,
    in their word, progress is primed.

    Evil is a strongman that beheads itself
    when such a one appears: I am!
    When they stride softly, moon-silver-small,
    murky rivers swim green and right and fresh…

    When they see hardship, injustice and sin
    and hard days riding men,
    their gaze is a mother: she can fiercely shift mountains
    for one of her own …

    Their power derives evermore from the stars,
    the first to awaken when someone cries,
    compelled to hear the weeping
    and speeding to the suspect corners of the night…

    Their power is locked in the darkest concealment,
    though reflected and dancing on their walls is a vision;
    the heavens grow wrathful and begin to redden
    when a portion of a city has already been burned…

    But when good people’s tears draw nigh to the fire
    it’s a sea where a prophet’s been swimming all the while.
    Because when good people’s tears mingle with fire
    the heart of the world is scorched and cries

    and cries:

    Good people! Like a bolt, drive into life!
    Your triumph is a blessing for the entire land.
    You’ll catch the bullets in mid-flight,
    your shield even holds God in its hand.

    Translated by Miri Koral

    (more…)

  • Yisroel Shtern

    I’m not envious of anyone,
    save the song of the scythe
    eventide in the countryside…

    I’m not envious of anyone,
    save the fathomless music
    of the silence
    that chases the path,
    the robust and wending path
    of the roots
    of a tree.

    In the humid hollowing echo
    of the oxen’s bellows
    one can still hear that groan
    of the pregnant earth
    when it gave birth
    to the first chunks of field.

    I’m not envious of anyone,
    save the pensive sound of a scythe
    eventide in the countryside.

    Translated by Miri Koral

    (more…)

  • Yisroel Shtern

    Though Springtime, there was rain and snow,
    and above the columns of night
    grief clambered like a cat and terrorized all the roads.
    I sat alone, leafing through an old holy book.

    Then a phrase transcending generations shimmered
    through my home like a crown, a proud phrase though old,
    but I did not move towards this dream
    with a silver platter, with bread and with salt.

    And the phrase did not flash like lightning during my sleep,
    and in the morning it did not sit by my head
    with daggers of judgment and punishment aimed at my eyes;
    it didn’t gnaw like sulfur permeating my days.

    I arose Spring-like with the day’s dance,
    wrote joy with my stick in the warm sand.
    Woe did not drip into my breakfast repast
    when a bloodied Jew came sliding along the wall

    Leaden and blind like a cloud, unable to locate his house;
    when laughter curls itself into the hairs of the brutes;
    when my street hightails it swiftly and small as a mouse.
    And in the park trees stand like hunters’ guns…

    Neither the morning nor the afternoon was ashamed.
    And the sun towered golden in town.
    And neither in the sun, nor in the tree, nor in me did burn
    the old-holy-book-phrase: “Man is formed from God”…

    Translated by Miri Koral

    (more…)

  • Yisroel Shtern (1894-1942) was born in Ostrołęka (Ostrolenke), educated in yeshivas, and became a follower of the Mussar movement. After being imprisoned during the First World War, he lived in Warsaw, where he ultimately perished in the Ghetto in 1942. He published poems in many literary journals, and became known as one of the most important Yiddish poets in the period between the two world wars. Like so many others, his unpublished work was lost when the Ghetto was destroyed.

    Sources:

  • Chaim Semiatitski (Khayim Semiatitsky)

    On the street
    the trodden snow lies.
    Its countenance is pale
    and it cries.

    So I’ll invite the snow
    into my abode
    to be a guest of mine.

    Who’d dare tread
    with muddied boots
    upon a guest of mine?

    Translated by Miri Koral

    (more…)

  • Yakov Shudrikh

    How everything here has changed, the color transformed.
    How lovely my city is, all spiffed up and adorned.
    The red flags flutter down nearly to the ground
    and for me every weekday is cause for celebration.

    So I walk around as in a dreamland,
    with a child’s glee with every stride and step.
    I’ve never seen so much light and radiance;
    it seems I’m becoming radiant myself.

    How everything here has changed, the color transformed.
    How close now, how cozy, how dear everything is.
    On these streets deadly danger was omnipresent,
    as were the heavy bootsteps of secret agents and police.

    Every worker here had lost his worth,
    felt an alien on this earth.
    And alien was your own language, your own word,
    forbidden to be sung or prompt a hearty laugh.

    How everything here has changed, the color transformed.
    With head held high, I’m dazzled, adorned.
    The young are singing, the elders winking too.
    The sky is looking down with such a peaceful blue.

    My city’s song wafts from every window,
    lauding Stalin and the Red Army.
    My heart sings along with them all joyfully,
    happy to have arrived at this moment in time!

    Lvov, 1939

    Translated by Miri Koral

    (more…)

  • Moyshe Shimel (Maurycy Szymel)

    Here on the wooden bench
    is where we’ll wait for the sun to set.
    As we waited a thousand years past.
    It will certainly arrive. It has never fooled us yet.

    We’ve already covered so many miles…
    Now the evening washes over us in waves of golden dust –
    Now we can tell each other quietly,
    quietly and well
    about that for which we have waited
    and about that which will never be.

    The effort takes its toll.

    Offer me, dear one, your hand in evening-glow.
    Deliver me, forgive, and accept –

    because keeping one’s eyes open hurts.

    Translated by Miri Koral

    (more…)

  • Yakov Shudrikh

    With the night my silky dreams dissolved.
    With the night my quiet singing stopped.
    With the day, my poem arrived swimming
    on the storm with a fierce echoing sound.

    With my eyes facing the tumult of generations,
    with my heartbeat in tune with my peers’ commotion,
    I go about on an earth red-hot from slaughter
    and mingle my poem with the mighty choir.

    Just yesterday I swallowed the gold of the stars,
    scarcely swaying with the soft stir of the leaves.
    I wanted to traverse my life with the ease
    of winging birds and the grace of deer.

    But my serene wish was torn asunder
    as I was enveloped by real happenings.
    Harsh menacing acts kept occurring
    and my dream intruded like a traitor.

    And the golden wonder melted from my poem
    because wonders themselves don’t weave a tale.
    The tale proceeds on crutches, with bandages,
    and the writer’s poem is born out of pain.

    With the night my silky dreams dissolved.
    With the night my quiet singing stopped.
    Harken to my shout, my loud symphony
    of a world coming with fresh sparkle and joy!

    Translated by Miri Koral

    (more…)