Memory

All those years ago when I was a child, the oldest of my immigrant family's children. Realizing that something was not quite right. Hearing my father speak of dreadful dark things happening somewhere else, across the world, in Europe. Something dread having to do with Jews. I was already aware that Jews were not held in great esteem in some elements of the society in which I lived. I knew, vaguely, that some children considered me to be an outcast of some sort, a representative killer of Christ.

I knew because I'd been called "Christ-killer" often enough. Certainly that disturbed me, and I found it more than a little offensive, and frightening. But I was also proud that I was a Jew. I can't say completely what it was that so filled me with pride, but it was a fact of my existence. My impoverished family somehow, somewhere found enough funds to send me to an after-school parochial school.

I dimly recall my father walking the route with me from the house we lived in to the location of the school. After that I was on my own, expected to walk the route myself each late afternoon after school for several hours of instruction in Jewish history, tradition, culture. I learned to write and to read Yiddish, and my existing vocabulary was built upon. History was fascinating and revealing; and no little bit romantic.

Jewish songs and literature were equally interesting, and although I didn't at the time appreciate that I was expected to attend two schools on a daily basis, and on week-ends as well, it was part of my life. Several of the songs I was taught while attending this secular, humanist, socialist-oriented Jewish school remain with me yet. One of them brings tears to my eyes, reminding me as it does of the Holocaust.

It's the song of the Vilna Partisans. Written by a Jewish man who fought with the Partisans, using an old Russian folk melody. I had remembered the Jewish words and sung them often, but the English version had escaped me. Until I looked it up on an Internet site. Strangely enough, inputting the first five words in Yiddish brought me all the information I looked for.

The Partisan Song - Hersh Glick

Zog nit keyn mol az du geyst dem letstn veg,
Khotsh himeln blayene farshtein bloye teg,
Kumen vet nokh undzer oysgebenkte sho,
S'vet a poyk ton undzer trot -- mir zaynen do!

Never say that there is only death for you
Though leaden clouds may be concealing skies of blue
Because the hour that we have hungered for is near;
Beneath our tread the earth shall tremble: We are here!

Fun grinem palmenland biz vaysn land fun shney,
Mir kumen on mit undzer payn, mit undzer vey,
Un vu gefain s'iz a shprits fun undzer blut,
Shprotsn vet dort undzer gvure, undzer mut.

From land of palm tree to the far-off land of snow
We shall be coming with our torment and our woe,
And everywhere our blood has sunk into the earth
Shall our bravery, our vigour blossom forth!

S'vet di morgnzun bagildn undz dem haynt,
Un der nekhtn vet farshvindn mitn faynd,
Nor oyb farzamen vet di zun in dem kayor --
Vi a parol zol geyn dos lid fun dor tsu dor.

We'll have the morning sun to set our day aglow,
And all our yesterdays shall vanish with the foe,
And if the time is long before the sun appears,
Then let this song go like a signal through the years.

Dos lid geshribn iz mit blut un nit mit blay,
S'iz not keyn lidl fun a foygl af der fray,
Dos hot a fold tsvishn faindike vent
Dos lid gezungen mit naganes in di hent!

This song was written with our blood and not with lead;
It's not a song that birds sing overhead.
It was a people, among toppling barricades,
That sang this song of ours with pistols and grenades.

To zog nit keyn mol az du geyst dem letstn veg,

Khotsh kimlen blayene farshtein bloye teg,
Kumen vet nokh undzer oysgebenkte sho --
S'vet a poyk ton undzer trot -- mir zaynen do!