Yiddish-American Popular Song before, during and after the ...



Yiddish-American Popular Song before, during and after the Holocaust- Outline of some ideas

When Sara Nomberg talks about the songs she heard in the concentration camp, what type of music did she remember? There were some Yiddish, some Polish, some German songs… “Liza started to sing a song about a Jewish mother” (p.6) it may have been the song. How could anyone could study the culture of a people without its songs? My thesis will be that the Yiddish and Austrian dialect language are very similar. Songs about God are not a form of liturgy per se in Judaic music, but rather reflect a pattern of spiritual folk expression. [good beginning] [Also, at some point, you might consider how music may have helped the inmates to maintain a hold on their souls, since music is often an expression of the soul.]

“The words of a Yiddish song ran through my mind: Supppose, I build castles in the air…” (p.9) Look up the song

“At first, I did not believe my own ears, but later I could even catch the words…I imagined I heard…” (p.10)

“Do you know how to sing? So Liza sang: Auch ich war einst ein Reicher” (p10) How does one put quotation marks into quoctation marks?

Where did the music come from: Intro:

Most of the Jewish immigrants who came to America passed through New York. They were processed at Castle Garden off the old Battery Place, and after 1892, at Ellis Island in the harbor. Some newcomers quickly moved elsewhere across the United States, but many settled first in New York City on the Lower East Side of Manhatten island. They were all birds of flight, fleeing from time as well as place. They were not to return to Europe. In America, the early times of entry were a time of great transition, full of loneliness, uncertainty, and insecurity. There was a wide gap in the understanding of culture and vernacular customs between the newer Jewish immigrants and those Jews who’d come to America even earlier. There was a kind of theatre within the community, with music and stories, and with captivating performers. Theatrical stars served as surrogate families. Their performances helped to explain and interpret, easing the difficulties. As more Yiddish entertainers arrived, they first occupied the Oriental Theater and then the Roumanian Opera House. Soon the names of the theaters were changed, and the big three houses of the time became the People’s Theater, the Windsor and the Thalia. Children were permitted to attend on all programs. In 1902, journalist Hutchins Hapgood wrote in his book The Spirit of the Ghetto: Studies of the Jewish Quarter of New York “…the theaters of the chosen people alone present the serious as well as the trivial interests of an entire community.” (need the book, pages, citations) [This is very interesting, but I don’t see the connection to the Holocaust. Woundn’t the Yiddish songs of, say, Eastern Europe, provide a better context for examining the songs of the Holocaust? After all, almost no American Jews wended up in the camps.]

(Jews constituted less than one percent of the population of Germany during the Weimar Republic, the period from the end of World War I to the rise of National Socialism. Though they lived almost exclusively in villages and small towns at the beginning of the nineteenth century, by 1900 the majority -- though by no means all -- of German Jews lived in big cities. Whereas 60 percent of German Jews in 1910 lived in urban areas with more than 100,000 inhabitants, in 1933 more than 70 percent of German Jews resided in cities. Only 10 percent of German Jews lived in the countryside, while 20 percent lived in smaller towns and villages. According to a 1925 census, 564,973 registered Jews lived in the Weimar Republic, 71.5 percent of whom resided in Germany’s largest province, Prussia. (My best friend Laurie’s pictures are all of her heritage from Prussia) Scholars have long understood that more aggressive antisemitism, repeated economic setbacks, and inherent political instability set the limits of Jewish acculturation during the Weimar Republic. In recent years, however, researchers have explored how these trends helped to foster a sense of communal identity among a wide range of German Jews.

An organization unique to central Europe, the Gemeinde (community; pl., Gemeinden), served as a focal point of German Jewish life. Created to centralize local Jewish activities, the Gemeinde embraced all Jews within the country -- including non-citizens. Gemeinden, which during the Weimar Republic became public corporations, were empowered by the government to organize local Jewish communal and ritual affairs. They hired rabbis and religious functionaries, maintained and built synagogues, and ran a variety of institutions, among them newspapers, social associations, libraries, health facilities, and charity funds. Tax revenues, collected either by the government on behalf of the Jews or by the community itself, supported communal activities. Within the Gemeinden, Jews expressed communal identities in many ways: participation at the local level in youth movements, Zionist groups such as Brit Shalom, new Jewish schools, Jewish student fraternities, athletic societies, Jewish libraries, B’nai B’rith lodges, singing societies, the visual arts, and in Jewish museums. At the national level, in 1893 Jews organized against antisemitic attacks in the Central Union of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith. Other organizations, such as the Reich Association of Jewish Front Soldiers (more than 100,000 German Jews served during World War I; roughly 12, 000 died for their country), or the feminist League of Jewish Women, founded in 1904, indicate the many forms of ethnic solidarity among German Jews before and after World War I.

Attempts to promote a sense of Jewish identity in Germany differed in important respects from Jewish associational life in Eeastern Europe. German Jews developed no trade unions and very few professional associations. Although many individual Jews enjoyed acclaim in the arts, cultural activities such as music and theater (though not literature) were only rarely organized under Jewish auspices. The career profile of German Jews differed markedly from the general population. Historically prohibited from many professional endeavors, Jews were disproportionately represented in some areas of the economy, such as journalism, law, medicine, and retailing. Concentrated in a small number of professions (more often than not in urban areas), Jews were especially visible to the Weimar Republic’s often violent critics. While most German Jews were middle class, a significant proportion of the Jews living in Weimar Germany, many of them Yiddish-speaking refugees from Eastern Europe, eked out a humble existence as industrial workers, artisans, or peddlers. The hyperinflation of the early 1920s and the Great Depression (occasioned by the American stock market crash in 1929) greatly complicated the lives of virtually all German Jews.

[In these paragraphs on Germany, you have what seems to be unnecessary information. If you are writing about Yiddish songs in the Holocaust, neither America nor Germany plays a big role. Most Jews in Germany did not know Yiddish; it is a predominantly East European Jewish language. If you bring in the Jewish culture of Germany, it should be by way of contrast: whereas in Germany there was little or no Yiddish culture, in Eastern Europe the Yiddish culture flourished.]

At In 1941, Yiddish popular songs reflected a painful awareness among Americans of the great peril to Jews in Europe, but the enourmous threat of total annihilation was not widely recognized. Throughout the years of military struggle, hopes remained for an early victory, and for a peaceful return to European Jewish life as it once had been. (Heskes, 398) (Excerpt From the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.) [This is a good point. Here, since in 1941 there were American Yiddish Holocaust songs, you could consider the difference—if any—between these songs sung from far away and the songs sung deep within the camps.]

Another part of my research: Where do the z’s in English come from? How can I find out? (Maybe I will also try to research linquistic aspects) One of my observations, although not sure, is that perhaps the English “z” comes from the Yiddish pronounciation. [Why is this important? If you want to get the answer to this question, one place to look might be the Oxford English Dictionary.]

Songs I have found and am interested in: (Sheet music not yet found) Hitler’s mapoleh (“Hitler’s downfall.”) I am sure he loved that one, 2973, p. 402.) is a song written by Ida Gittleman, copyright in 1942, and from the same composer also a song called: “Di mameh vart oyf a brif/ Mama’s waiting for a letter.”, copyright in 1943. The song Farblondjheteh Kinder doesn’t sound like “Lost children” It sounds more like “Verblendete Kinder” with “verblendet” being a confused state, blindly following something they don’t know. [Is this song from the camps or from America?]

“The fate of women is often tied to the fate of children” (Patterson, p.190) It is much worse for a person to see their children suffer, then to suffer themselves.

Is there an even stronger attachment from the mothers and children of the Holocaust, a stronger blood line running through the women and children than from men of the Holocaust?.

It amplifies the insignificance of women and children, even on a larger scale. Is there such a thing as discrimination within any faith, concerning the place and traditional role of females? “And so we proceed from the assault on the feminine to the suffocation of the child to which the authors of the Holocaust diary bear witness. “ (Patterson, p. 191) Is there a reversal, such as the aussault on the child to the suffocation of the feminine? [Yes, I think the reverse also applies.] If there is such a reversal, then the ultimate question will be that with the annihilation of the feminine, killing the seed of feminine trait, in spirit and biologically, will be no more spiritual life as such? Sara Nomberg-Przytyk, talks about this in Auschwitz:“True Tales from a Grotesque Land.” The babies of the Jewish women always turned out so healthy… it was disgusting how healthy they came out, even though the women had already been beaten to living corpses. Was it not the spirit that died within the children at the sight of the remains of their mothers? [Yes, good question.]

We don’t know enough about infant perceptions, what you feel when first born, into a non-world of screams and shrieks. In the light of our new catastrophies and natural disasters, we begin to see reports in which one can learn to look for more messages than there are presented in our media. A child’s glaring eyes, stunned and paralyzed from what its small frame had to witness. Unmovable eyes, wide eyes, unnatural eyes. As the eye is the window to the soul, the soul in these eyes is frozen and light-less, demortalized and starkr. We can find new names for the conditions of shock that are implemented through the newest type of Holocaust memory. Is it not almost really here, the new era of an almost unutterable truth? We would like to make it known, but the too many components of it can not tie it into a straight line, it remains confused, hidden, and mistaken for something else. It remains and sustains, and the Holocaust becomes a source of comfort among those who are not forgetting.

[When you shift from the music to these very insight thoughts and question about mother and child, you shift to a completely different topic. Do you want to tie in the assault on mother and child with the examination of Yiddish songs? As it stands, that is unclear. It can be done, but you have not laid it out that way.]

Songs I found: Dos lid der libeh,(Yiddish. Engl. translation: “The song of love”) Ros. No. 29845

Copr. No. E272464; Dec. 15/16, 1911

Music: Joseph M. Rumshisky

Lyrics: Anshel Schorr

Prop./pub.: Hebrew Publishing Co.

Album in two versions: piano and voice; violin with text. “The song of love.” Libretto: Boris Thomashefsky. Sheet music: same cover as entry 416; verses in Hebrew, Yiddish char. On back cover and on inside front cover. Five songs: see entries 416-18, 426; and, Men tohr nit (“One must not/It is forbidden”). The song in piano and voice called “Ikh hob dikh lib, America” (song 2972, p. 401) is translated as “I love you, America”, but there is a more defined, “smaller” way of expressing this. “I have you dear, America.” “I like you”- would both be a bit better. “I hold you dear, America” I suppose, it is the only think to replace “hob” but it means “haben”- “to have.” “Ikh lib dikh” (“Ich liebe dich”, or “I love you”) is too “big”, too pompous.

What songs were the women and men singing?

This will be my topic- Yiddish Song during the Holocaust

I like the topic, but what you have presented here is a little disconnected and unfocused. You can make the connections, but as yet you have not done so. For a sharper focus, the outline you follow should look something like this:

I. Introduction

II. East European Yiddish music

III. Yiddish resistance songs

IV. Yiddish ghetto songs

V. Yiddish camp songs

VI. Conclusion

This is just a suggestion, but it might help you to get a little more organizaed with your very good topic.

Here are some possible sources for you:

Music and the Holocaust by Shirli Gilbert

Singing for Survival by Gila Flam

The Undying Flame by Jerry Silverman

Art, music, and Writings of the Holocaust by Susan Willoughby

Bearing Witness by Philip Rosen

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