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.

  • Moyshe Shimel (Maurycy Szymel)

    Love have I for all that lives in song
    Birds, women in blue hats
    A tree, a street, a wall
    All that is familiar and what’s not

    And what is past and what will be:

    Jericho’s walls
    Lemberger wind that rushes in my ears
    And the clever silent stone
    That will someday mark my grave

    Because all that lives is resisting death
    (He breaths through the nostrils of black burial horses,
    and blushes passionately in dusky red)

    Therefore, these are good:
    The birds, the young women in blue hats
    The blood
    And headstones in cemeteries covered with light fallen snow.

    (more…)

  • Y L Kohn

    I moved out of the workshop to the Union
    into the library, organizing and youth club
    a new environment replaced my poor
    little sorrowful home

    (more…)

  • Mordkhe (Mordechai) Gebirtig

    Jews, let us be cheerful!
    It won’t be long, I hope —
    The war will soon be over,
    And soon their end will come.
    Be cheerful and don’t worry!
    Don’t carry on in grief;
    Have patience and have confidence —
    Take hard times in your stride.

    (more…)

  • Borekh Gelman

    Who is this he who is following us close
    in your every step there?
    Through every crack in a mouse hole
    you feel his cold watching stare…

    His look is ice cold
    with mustache sticky and damp
    with paws slippery with evil
    crept up on your skin

    (more…)

  • Kalman Lis

    (From the series: Time-Motifs)

    Who else like me – for generations kindred with the field, with grass and stalk,
    joined to my border, with air and earth –
    can say: let the axe be like a sword – a ritual slaughterer’s knife sharp in the enemy’s cold hand,
    I’m not going to be moved!

    (more…)

  • Moyshe Shimel (Maurycy Szymel)

    Summer dear, you come home so brown so hot
    You fall on me breathing heavy: what heat!
    And I write about fjords – watery inlets
    And believe my song will protect me
    From the noisy outdoors, the big back yard
    Where people are shouting noisily all day: I buy and I sell

    (more…)

  • Khayim Semiatitski

    1.

    The night – a hungry dark dog –
    has licked the red blood of the west
    and quietly laid down on the earth
    Three crows stand on my roof and curse;
    one pecks at my heart,
    the heart has bloodied my way
    now dogs lick at my ways

    (more…)

  • Hershele (Hersh Danilewicz)

    When the boys arrive
    Together with the girls
    Hearts get lit
    And faces glow in flame

    They will play in love
    Couples stroll together
    The little town is blooming
    A new world is here

    (more…)

  • Hersh Danilewicz / Danilevitsh (1882-1941) was born in the countryside of Lipno (Lipne), and then moved to Warsaw. Hershele, as he was known by the people of Warsaw, was encouraged to write as a youth by Y. L. Peretz. He was one of the founders of the Łódź Yiddish Literary Group. He wrote children’s songs, humorous poems, and translations from Polish and Russian to Yiddish. His songs were so popular they were thought to be folk songs. He died of hunger with his wife and two children in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1941. Katsenelson, writing under the pen name of Khayim Goldberg in his poem Di Khronik fun Hershele’s Toit (“The Chronicle of Hershele’s Death”) reports that Hershele left a thousand poems.

    (more…)

  • Miryem (Miriam) Ulinover

    Tell me Bobe dearest wise
    Tell me Beauty Dear
    How this little rose red cherry
    came onto my cheek right here

    (more…)