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.

  • Misha Troyanov

    Close your doors, lock all up
    mad dogs are howling in this dark city

    Mad dogs are howling in this dark city
    waking little children – making them cry
    Those who long have been saddened
    will even sadder be

    (more…)

  • Misha Troyanov, also known as Misza Trojanow (1906-1942) was a pen name used by Moyshe Troyanovski. He was born in Dąbrowa Górnicza near Będzin, and later lived in Łódź and Warsaw. He and had a religious education, and later worked as a tutor, business agent, and storehouse employee. His literary work first appeared in a number of Yiddish newspapers and journals based in Łódź and Warsaw. He was killed by the Nazis in Otwock on 19 August 1942.

    (more…)

  • Sholem Zhirman

    It’s a mighty symphony
    just one word – not more:
    Over human soul
    Be an Engineer.

    (more…)

  • Miryem Ulinover

    When from my little village I was parted
    My grandfather took me to the lake
    the spring sun warmed the blue sky
    He handed me a note when we said goodbye

    (more…)

  • Borekh Gelman

    My Boss owns a clock
    like all bosses do
    but this clock was made funny
    by the firm “Time is Money”

    (more…)
  • Borekh Gelman

    Borekh (Baruch) Gelman (1910-1941) was born in Widze (Vidzy) near Vilnius, now in Belarus. Gelman wrote for many publications including Di Naye Folks-tsaytung, Kleyne Folks-staytung, Yugnt-veker, Bokhnshrift, Foroys, Viner Tog, and Literarishe Bleter. He moved to Warsaw in 1936 and lived there until 1939. When the Nazis invaded Poland he escaped back to Widze, but was killed there with his five brothers and sisters in a pogrom in 1941.

    Sources:

  • Sholem Zhirman

    I owned a bunch of negative critiques
    in songs of battle courage and spite
    a nobody with hardly a worthy thought
    but today a wealth of treasured “capital”

    I recall in prison when I took the book into my hands
    and silently embraced the wealth of ideas
    a holy shiver trembled in me
    when opening Karl Marx’s “Das Kapital”

    (more…)

  • Sholem Zhirman (1909-1941) was born in Vilnius, and worked as a carpenter in his father’s workshop. He published his first poems in Warsaw’s Literarishe Tribune, and later published in a number of Yiddish newspapers and journals. He was jailed on several occasions for his activities in the revolutionary movement, and was later confined in the Bereza Kartuska concentration camp between 1933 and 1939, where he contracted tuberculosis and became deaf. He was murdered by the Gestapo with his wife in Paneriai (now in Lithuania) in late 1941.

    Source: Congress for Jewish Culture

  • Yakov (Dzhek) Gordon

    Great writer, our writer
    bright eyed so deep the shine
    On your mild and tender smile
    there is a shadowed quiet cry.

    (more…)

  • Yakov (Dzhek) Gordon was born in Bialystok in 1914. He was killed as a partisan in the woods around Białystok. Several of his poems were published in the anthology Lider fun di getos un lagern (Poems from the ghettos and camps). Not much is known about his life.

    Sources: