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Yiddish Glory

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Yiddish Glory: The Lost Songs of World War II is an album by Six Degrees Records which consists of Yiddish songs written during World War II and the Holocaust.It was nominated for the 61st Annual Grammy Awards.

History

The team of a Russian Jewish ethnomusicologist and Yiddish scholar Moisei Beregovsky collected hundreds of Jewish songs during 1930–1940s, and planned to publish an anthology. However, during the post-war outbreak of Soviet anti-Semitism Beregovsky was convicted of "Jewish nationalism" and sent to Gulag. His confiscated archives were returned to his wife.

The collection of wax cylinder recordings, of which 600 were made by Beregovsky, was looted by the Nazis but returned after the war. However, when the Cabinet of Jewish Culture of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences was liquidated, the recordings disappeared and were believed to be destroyed. In the 1990s Beregovsky's wax cylinders were discovered and catalogued by the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine. His collections were published and republished, and many tunes entered the repertoire of Klezmer musicians.

Anna Shternshis, Al and Malka Green Professor in Yiddish Studies and the Director of the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto worked with Beregovsky's paper archives, and Yiddish Glory is the result of a multi-year project by Shternshis and Psoy Korolenko. Most of the selected Holocaust-related songs had only lyrics, and musical solutions for them were suggested by Sergei Erdenko.

It was nominated and shortlisted for the 61st Annual Grammy Awards in the World Music category.

Track listing

From the Six Degrees Records website:

  • "Afn Hoykhn Barg" – On The High Mountain
    • A satirical song, lyrics by a Veli Shargorodskii about the war experience of a Jewish soldier in 1943–44; ends with the words "Hitler is kaput!" (Hitler is done for!, a phrase learned by heart by every Soviet person by the end of the war, because that's what surrendering Germans repeated like a mantra.)
  • "Shpatsir in Vald" – A Walk in the Forest
  • "Yoshke Fun Odes" – Yoshke From Odessa
  • "Kazakhstan"
    • Central Asia was a major destination of Soviet civilians, including 1.4 million Jews (with some 250,000 in Kazakhstan), where at their new workplaces they met the Jews sent to Gulag. The song is about this piece of the Jewish eternal exile experience. For this song Erdenko composed the only new tune, combining Roma, Yiddish and Romanian musical styles.
  • "Mayn Pulemyot" – My Machine Gun
    • A Jewish soldier's pride at his machine gun killing the Germans
  • "Shelakhmones Hitlern" – Purim Gifts For Hitler
  • "Taybls Briv" – Taybl's Letter To Her Husband at the Front
  • "Misha Tserayst Hitlers Daytchland" – Misha Tears Apart Hitler's Germany
  • Chuvasher Tekhter – Daughters of Chuvashia, words by Sonya Roznberg, 1942.
  • "Mames Gruv" – My Mother's Grave
    • The song a child who visits the grave of the mother who perished in the Holocaust.
  • "Babi Yar"
    • About the Babi Yar massacre. The song is that of a Jewish soldier (one of half a million who served in the Soviet Army) who returns to Kiev and learns that all his family was massacred.
  • "Tulchin"
    • Tulchyn was under the Romanian administration during the Holocaust. The song was written by a 10-year-old who lost his family in the ghetto in Tulchin
  • "Shturemvind" – A Storm Wind
  • "Fir Zin" – Four Sons
  • "Kazakhstan" reprise
  • "Nitsokhn Lid" – Victory Song
  • "Homens Mapole" – Haman's Defeat
  • "Tsum Nayem Yor 1944" – Happy New Year 1944

Band

According to the Six Degrees Records webpage:

The producer and the person who brought the band together is Daniel Rosenberg.

References

  1. ^ YIDDISH GLORY, Six Degrees Records
  2. ^ "A collection of Yiddish songs was thought lost forever. Now they've been nominated for a Grammy. – Jewish Telegraphic Agency". jta.org. 25 January 2019. Retrieved 26 January 2019.
  3. ^ "The Devastating Resonances of Yiddish Songs Recovered from the Second World War". The New Yorker. 27 July 2018. Retrieved 26 January 2019.
  4. ^ Yiddish Glory: The Lost Songs Of World War II, a YouTube presentation by Six Degrees Records
  5. ^ Eda Beregovskaya [ru] "М. Я. Береговский: жизнь и судьба" // Арфы на вербах. – Москва-Иерусалим: Gesharim, 1994.
  6. "Slobin on Beregovski (and the survival of Klezmer music), by George Robinson, from the KlezmerShack". klezmershack.com. Retrieved 26 January 2019.
  7. "YIVO | Beregovskii, Moisei Iakovlevich". yivoencyclopedia.org. Retrieved 26 January 2019.
  8. Petrusich, Amanda (27 July 2018). "The Devastating Resonances of Yiddish Songs Recovered from the Second World War". The New Yorker. Retrieved 26 January 2019.
  9. "Anna Shternshis: A Grammy Nomination for 'Yiddish Glory'". Jewish Journal. 20 December 2018. Retrieved 26 January 2019.
  10. "The lost Songs Of World War II". Six Degrees Records. 19 January 2018. Retrieved 2 March 2019.
  11. Sophie Milman reflects on Yiddish Glory’s Grammy nomination
  12. Fifteen-year-old sang on Grammy-nominated album
  13. ^ Perry King, Songs from the past: U of T researcher's work leads to Grammy nomination, University of Toronto News, February 6, 2019
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