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.

  • Yakov Shudrikh

    The golden tale, my child, has vanished,
    I heard it told by the fleeting wind.
    The golden tale has flown far off,
    it hovers with the golden sun above.
    So I’ll sing to you now, my child, listen well,
    another story of our great world I’ll tell:
    the tale of that world is a bloody one,
    a tale about peasants and white-robed noblemen.
    The nobles dwelt in dazzling palaces,
    the peasants to them being lackeys and serfs.
    The peasants drove plows over a great expanse,
    thus flourished grains and the sweetest produce.
    In autumn the heavens burst into tears
    and the nobles imbibed wines and liqueurs.
    And from the trees, leaves rotted and fell
    while their bared branches were all atremble.
    What befell that land, what occurred then?
    A great gathering in the courtyard grew —
    the peasants were hurting with nothing to chew
    while bellies swelled from out the nobles’ sheds!
    Like birds from the nest, hunger drove peasants
    from their huts in seeking sustenance…
    And on the way the wind snapped at their clothing –
    — Let’s put a stop to this! Onward! Let’s get going!
    But gendarmes discharged their lead bullets
    and blood congealed on the gardens and cobbles.

    And the tale, my child, keeps on spinning.
    But I won’t spin it now — it’s time for sleeping.
    Some day you’ll likely give it an apt conclusion
    when you’ve grasped it with its due comprehension.

    Translated by Miri Koral

    (more…)

  • Yakov Shudrikh

    Just as musical chords can lie hidden
    for someone to strum the silent strings,
    I hold love in my heart and am biding,
    though no one has yet come by.

    Upon my heart soft Springs have scrolled
    and suns have drunk the blossoms’ wine.
    I threw wide all the doors and all the windows,
    and still, no one has yet come by.

    I stepped on yellowed rustling leaves,
    accompanied their forlorn autumn cry.
    I soaked my yearning in autumnal rains,
    but no one has yet come by.

    And since love has held its silence,
    buried under layers of woes,
    the earth cried out its misery,
    and I ceased hearing love’s sound.

    I do know love flowers in me, like every bloom,
    like every loveliness life confers.
    It matures in my poetry and will ripen yet
    when it becomes easier to live on earth.

    Translated by Miri Koral

    (more…)

  • Yakov Shudrikh

    I stride around alone seeking to hide
    my heart’s unease in the snow, the white snow.
    Winds have fallen asleep in the rock-cracks
    and the hills are silent, hushed and pale.

    I imagine myself an animal that evaded
    the hunter’s shot, roaming the quiet woods.
    Here – a white Spring blooms with silverbuds,
    and now I want to live and bloom with the Spring.

    Here no birds are singing, no crows crowing,
    but a barefoot, dulcet day advances,
    and on its head the sky drips drops of blue
    to reveal an enchantment out of a storybook.

    I want to babble the way brooks babble,
    and I want to shout: Hello! I’m here!
    Yet my voice would go unheard, as all here are asleep…
    Besides, who would know my tongue?

    I observe the trees, silent as crosses,
    imagine they’re people standing solidified,
    and at any moment one will call my name
    and the woods will start to advance over me.

    Nah, nonsense, brothers! Startled by echoes
    the wind has brought from faraway cities and lands!
    My home – still bare, without shutters or roofs:
    the wind will break everything; the wind will ravage all.

    You can begin to rustle, trees; you can begin to sing, winds.
    Let hills now roar and let vacant caves scream.
    Spring is not far, only Winter is white,
    and I’ll surely not be rid of my unease…

    Translated by Miri Koral

    (more…)

  • Yakov Shudrikh

    The wind suddenly threw open the door
    and swept in a heap of leaves.
    Sniffed, tugged at the curtain,
    touched everything, stroked it with its breath,
    and swiftly made its exit.

    Then I lifted my startled eyes
    and saw your face at the windows.
    Your hair was disheveled and straining – to fly.
    I ran to the window
    and yelled out your name.
    But your face disappeared
    like the moon behind veils of mist.
    I walked around the house, blind,
    tapped my hand, my head…
    and later I heard
    the wind knocking on the windowpane.

    In the wind my life was crying,
    as does the shepherd’s life in his fife…
    I sat down on the ground
    with the leaf-heaps
    and it occurred to me how very new
    I also am at this moment — —

    The door is open, as open
    as my heart is to you.
    When you return – I’ll close
    the door once more.

    Translated by Miri Koral

    (more…)

  • Ber Shnaper

    Until the night comes
    a day of living is luminous, vast and long —
    like the immense yearning to which I’ve succumbed!

    Until the night comes, O, till the night comes –
    I’ll lie down at the cups of all the blossoms,
    I’ll lie down at the cup of the loveliest bloom,
    I’ll lie down – a nursling – at the cup of the sun,

    and will nurse — —

    and all the trees, and leaves, and all the branches
    will stretch towards me their thousand hands
    as if they recognize in me their brother.
    And all the grasses, and all the herbs, and all the flowers
    as to a playmate, will they come,
    and they’ll make themselves known to me
    and they’ll reveal who they are to me…

    until the night, O, till the night comes.

    Until the night, O, till the night comes —
    I’ll suck out the juice from all the blossoms.
    I’ll drink up the dew from all the grasses
    and spring higher than all the springing rabbits.

    I’ll lap up the drops from all the rains
    and devour the dusts from all the lanes,
    and along with the rivers and all the streams —
    I will – by evening – reach all the seas…

    And until the night, O, till the night comes —
    and every drop on my palate has evaporated,
    and the life has dried in my chest
    like the milk in a skinny shriveled breast
    of a woman, frail and faded —

    I will still manage to live like this:

    to yet be able at that final moment
    to cry out to my life with the last of my blood
    and say, wordlessly – through bloody cries:

    Oh, my life! You were — sublime!

    Translated by Miri Koral

    (more…)

  • 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.

    (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.

    (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.

    (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.

    (more…)