1936 when a public social committee, specially created to mark the thirty year jubilee of his literary and musical work, published the second book of his songs under the title “Mayne lider” (my songs). The book contained over fifty songs with musical notation, and a thousand copies in a nice format were released in Vilna. Menachem Kipnis’ preface brought the utmost joy to Gebirtig. Below is some of what Kipnis wrote:
“Mordechai Gebirtig is a blessed and gifted poet and folk singer who sings, composes and cries out his songs in his room, but the songs throw open the doors and windows, and fill the street with music extolling Yiddish life, Jewish love, Jewish family life, mothers and children, Jewish suffering and poverty. All of this he painted with such warm, genuine and true colors that only a fine poet with a true sense of the people’s soul as Mordechai Gebirtig could create these colors and tones.“
… The true character of the folk Jewish music is the distress heart… his songs grasp the heart, warm the Jewish soul and fill it with its sweet melancholy and joyful vibration.
When the simple rhythm and strange African syncopation of the fox trot and tango dominate the street, all the silenced souls of the poets and singers of our people echo in Mordechai Gebirtig – the only national composer of the Jewish street in Poland.
…A sign of the true Jewish poetry is that it touches the heart… Gebirtig sings not from a rich saloon but from the four bare walls of a Jewish home, as a lullaby from a mother to a child within the four bare walls of a humble Jewish home.
…And another sign of authentic sincere poetry and folk song: the more you hear it, the more it inspires you, warms and touches you. This is the power and secret of Mordechai Gebirtig’s poetry and song, that it has already become the poetry and song of the entire nation”.
The collection - which included the songs most well known and popular among the public - produced a most positive response in the literary and musical circles of Jewish Poland, and reviews appeared in all the Jewish newspapers and magazines. In an article published in Warsaw's "Literarishe Bleter” (Literary Pages), issue 21 of 1936, M. Blecher wrote:
…”Besides the mentioned various poetic motifs and plots Gebirtig thought up his own completely original unique melodies which faultlessly merge with the text, explain it, elevate and bring it to life. This elevation and perfection of the poetic text through melody is one of Gebirtig’s virtues, which become immediately clear in those songs whose texts are literarily weaker."
M ordechai Gebirtig became the violin of the Jew in Poland; every breath of wind blew the strings which played people’s dreams and striving. He was the voice of all the suffering of his people. The heart's pain and the soul's fiber of the Jewish masses found their expression in the words and music of Gebirtig’s songs. He created works that were tightly bound to Jewish life in Poland. The hard fight for the existence, hopelessness in finding work and having a decent livelihood, terror and fear about tomorrow – these became the new topics of his songs.
In the year 1936, a dark anti-Semitic cloud covered the whole of Poland. Here and there a fist would be raised over Jewish heads - until a pogrom broke out in the little town of Przytyk (in the Radom region). The Jews, appalled and forlorn, stood with their arms folded and thought about what to do. At that moment Gebirtig, usually the lyric poet, exclaimed dramatically: “It burns, our shtetl burns!” (“Es brent, undzere shtetl brent!”), written by Gebirtig in 1938.
How come? Is it possible that when the evil winds with rage, tear, break and blow the wild flames stronger, should we stand aside and watch while “our shtetl with us in it goes up in ashes and flames, and would we not extinguish the fire with our own blood? “Brothers, do not stand with your arms folded!” Such was Mordechai Gebirtig’s call.
The song forecast the Holocaust, and was also a warning and a call to vigilance. Gebirtig’s words resounded among the youth and became a slogan