The Song Remains
דאָס ליד איז געבליבן
Welcome to our collection of English translations of some of the remaining works of important Polish Yiddish poets who were murdered during the Holocaust. We’ll be publishing one new poem per week into 2027.
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Hey, you country roads, my country roads – lengthy, wide Volin roads,
forever speaking to my heart, forever in my thoughts!
Hey, you country roads, my country roads, fringed like tablecloths,
a beauty impossible to paint with any brush.
Simkhe Don (1904-1942) was likely born in Pułtusk, and published many poems in the period between the two world wars. Very little is known about his life, other than his published poems. He was murdered by the Nazis in either Warsaw or Majdenek.
His name in the original collection of The Song Remains – דאָס ליד איז געבליבן is incorrectly cited as “Simkhe Dan”.
Sources:
My gaze races after the clock’s hands,
my ear quivers at the pulse of time,
and though this clamorous Warsaw
has swept me far away,
so very far —
still, porter, your bright shadow I remain.
My blood carries the clear echoes of your steps;
wherever I am,
I am your radiant chord!
A summer morning. Five AM,
and so the courtyard awakens.
Things get humming, animated,
off they run to feed the chickens.
A.
And lo and behold
Spring has indeed arrived –
Hey, sky – be joyful. Be joyful –
you’re fresh, newborn,
and lie in a blue golden cradle
rocked by the gentle wind.
The swallows sing you songs
and you play with a grey bear-cloud
that wandered onto your lap by chance.
You wake up before dawn
with a dreamy violet smile
with the shimmer of a rainbow,
and the evenings lull you to sleep
with the loveliest fairytales
by the colorful flickers
of sunsets.
Simkha-Bunim Shayevitch (1907-1944) was born in Łęczyca (Lentshits) into a poor religious family that moved to Łódź. He was ordained as a rabbi, but never practiced. He learned to make gloves, and wrote prolifically. His father and mother died shortly after being confined in the Łódź Ghetto. His lost his wife and youngest child when they were arrested in 1942. Simkha was deported to Auschwitz in 1944, Kaufering Concentration Camp where he died of typhus shortly before the camp was liberated.
Shayevitch began publishing his poems in 1933, and published poems and stories in a wide variety of publications. Much of his latter work was lost in the Łódź Ghetto, and never found.
Sources:
Dovid Kenigsberg (1891-1942?) was born in Busk, Galicia, and studied on Brody (Brod) and Czernowitz (Chernivtsi). He worked as a bookkeeper in Lwów (Lvov / Lviv / Lemberg). His first piece was printed in the collection Yungt in 1909, and he published his first poetry collection Lider, an 1912.
He served in the Austrian army in the First World War, after which he published his most substantial collection of poems, Hundert Sonetn (One Hundred Sonnets) in 1921.
Kenigsberg was in Lwów at the oubreak of the Second World War, and at that time was elected to the head of the Jewish division of the local author’s union. There are conflicting accounts of his death in 1942 – one account claims that he was murdered by the Soviets, and another that he died at the Yanove extermination camp aftger the liquidation of the Lwów ghetto.
Sources:
Morning hangs on the windows, blue
and fragrant with lilac and jasmine.
My lips tremble and pay quiet tribute to
everything that is young and green.