UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Yiddish Songs of the Shoah A Source Study Based on the Collections of Shmerke Kaczerginski A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Ethnomusicology by Bret Charles Werb 2014 Copyright © Bret Charles Werb 2014 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Yiddish Songs of the Shoah A Source Study Based on the Collections of Shmerke Kaczerginski by Bret Charles Werb Doctor of Philosophy in Ethnomusicology University of California, Los Angeles, 2014 Professor Timothy Rice, Chair This study examines the repertoire of Yiddish-language Shoah (or Holocaust) songs prepared for publication between the years 1945 and 1949, focusing its attention on the work of the most influential individual song collector, Shmerke Kaczerginski (1908-1954). Although a number of initiatives to preserve the “sung folklore” of the Nazi ghettos and camps were undertaken soon after the end of the Second World War, Kaczerginski’s magnum opus, the anthology Lider fun di getos un lagern (Songs of the Ghettos and Camps), published in New York in 1948, remains unsurpassed to this day as a resource for research in the field of Jewish folk and popular music of the Holocaust period. ii Chapter one of the dissertation recounts Kaczerginski’s life story, from his underprivileged childhood in Vilna, Imperial Russia (present-day Vilnius, Lithuania), to his tragic early death in Argentina. It details his political, social and literary development, his wartime involvement in ghetto cultural affairs and the underground resistance, and postwar sojourn from the Soviet sphere to the West. Kaczerginski’s formative years as a politically engaged poet and songwriter are shown to have underpinned his conviction that the repertoire of salvaged Shoah songs provided unique and authentic testimony to the Jewish experience of the war. The second chapter contextualizes Kaczerginski’s work by examining fourteen contemporaneous anthologies, beginning with the hastily-compiled first Shoah songbook issued in Bucharest within a month of the German surrender, and concluding with the politically aborted, never published major study prepared in 1949 by the Soviet-Ukrainian music folklorist Moshe Beregovski. The chapter compares the backgrounds and missions of each anthologist, and includes tabulated and annotated content listings for each collection discussed. The third chapter, a detailed study of Kaczerginski's Lider fun di getos un lagern, anatomizes the book’s four main sections and argues that its contents were organized according to a “narrative” structure. Interviews and correspondence with Kaczerginski’s friends, colleagues and family-members inform a discussion of the author’s working methods and the degree to which his background and cultural biases affected his collecting modus operandi. The chapter also includes Kaczerginski’s introductory “Collector’s Remarks” provided in full English translation for the first time, and a tabulated and annotated inventory of the anthology’s 235 songs and poems. iii Chapter four examines the musical genres favored by ghetto and camp songwriters. The discussion encompasses original compositions as well as contrafacta (or parody) works modeled after theater songs and popular dances such as the tango and the waltz. It also examines the use, especially by Jewish partisan songwriters, of melodies drawn from the repertoire of the Soviet mass song. The final chapter considers the legacy of Kaczerginski’s life and work. While the influence of his large collection has been pervasive—all subsequent anthologists of Yiddish Holocaust songs have directly or indirectly mined Lider fun di getos un lagern for source material—awareness of the central role he played in the preservation of the repertoire has inevitably declined with the passage of time. iv The dissertation of Bret Charles Werb is approved. Malcolm S. Cole Jacqueline Cogdell DjeDje Daniel M. Neuman Timothy Rice, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2014 v Dedication To my parents vi Table of Contents List of Tables ................................................................................................................................. ix List of Figures................................................................................................................................. x Acknowledgements......................................................................................................................xiii Vita................................................................................................................................................ xv Preface............................................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter I. A Partisan-Troubadour................................................................................................... 6 Chapter II. Fourteen Songbooks ................................................................................................... 36 1. Mi-ma’amakim: folkslider fun lagers un getos in poyln 1939-1944 (Out of the Depths: Folk Songs from the Camps and Ghettos of Poland, 1939-1944) .......................................... 36 2. Zamlung fun katset un geto lider (Anthology of Songs and Poems from the Concentration Camps and Ghettos)................................................................................................................ 40 3. S’brent (It’s Burning).......................................................................................................... 48 4. Lider fun bialistoker geto (Songs from Białystok Ghetto) ................................................. 50 5. Ghetto-und KZ. Lieder aus Lettland und Litauen (Ghetto and Concentration Camp Songs from Latvia and Lithuania) .......................................................................................... 53 6. Undzer gezang (Our Song) ................................................................................................. 58 7. Dos gezang fun vilner geto (The Song of Vilna Ghetto) .................................................... 62 8. Zog nisht keynmol az du geyst dem letstn veg (Never Say That You Have Reached the Final Road)........................................................................................................................ 68 9. Umkum fun der yidisher kovne (Destruction of Jewish Kovno)......................................... 70 10. Fun letstn khurbn (From the Last Extermination) ............................................................ 72 11. Songs of the Concentration Camps from the Repertoire of Emma Schaver..................... 78 12. Min Hametzar: me-shirei ha-getaot (“In Distress”: Songs of the Ghettos)...................... 80 13. Tsu zingen un tsu zogn (To Sing and to Recite)................................................................ 86 vii 14. Yidishe folks-shafung in di teg fun der groyse foterlandisher milkhome (Jewish Folk Creations in the Days of the Great Patriotic War)............................................. 90 Chapter III. Lider fun di getos un lagern (Songs from the Ghettos and Camps)........................ 101 Organization.......................................................................................................................... 111 “Zog nit keynmol” (Never Say)...................................................................................... 112 “Geto-lebn” (Ghetto Life).............................................................................................. 113 “Treblinke” (Treblinka) .................................................................................................. 116 “Kontratak” (Counterattack)........................................................................................... 119 Chapter IV. Concerning Music................................................................................................... 141 Stats and Graphs ................................................................................................................... 142 Newly-Composed Songs....................................................................................................... 144 Songs for the Ghetto Theater ................................................................................................ 147 In Folk-Style ......................................................................................................................... 157 Tango .................................................................................................................................... 164 Soviet Popular Song.............................................................................................................. 179 Chapter V. Legacy ...................................................................................................................... 195 Appendix A. Yehuda Ayzman, Introduction to Mi-ma’amaḳim: folkslider fun lagers un getos in poyln 1939-1944 (1945) (original Yiddish text). ..................................................... 210 Appendix B. Ayzman, Introduction (English translation).......................................................... 215 Appendix C. Collector’s Remarks: Kaczerginski’s Introduction to Lider fun di getos un lagern (original Yiddish text)................................................................................................................. 218 Appendix D. Lider fun di getos un lagern: Alphabetical Index