h me.
Once they brought me happiness.
Mordechai Gebirtig often had to drive off melancholy. He had to go forward and fight for his existence, and so he ran away from reality into dreaming:
My heart is sad,
I feel there gnawing and delight,
My soul is longing for something,
I do not know for what.
Youth is no more, there is no hope left, and now come the “sad and gloomy” years. The poet is full of “regret and suffering” as he recollects the past. He sings about his longing moods with soft tranquility:
My eyes can still see the house
Where I was born and brought up,
I also see my crib –
Still standing where it was –
All that vanished from sight as a dream.
He would become quiet and sentimental at such times. He would go into the fields, watch how "white doves” gather around him and hum and coo. Another time he noticed children playing and, joining their circle, he called out:
“Don’t look at my grey head,
What is that for your game?
My soul is still young,
Es it was a while ago”.
Mordechai Gebirtig was never in a rage. To be angry was strange to him. Even when he was sad and mournful, he put a soft smile on his face and looked for a ray of sun. He went to a green meadow, sat down near a stream, “lonesome and deep in thought," and soon a young girl appeared in front of him "who was looking at him and laughing." He started talking to her and, as the conversation shifted into gentle tones, everything seemed to him brighter.
He noticed a bird on a tree (Trili-Tri Li-Li), a little farther away he saw a summer bird alighting on a branch (“Abramele un Yosele”), little goats wandered around him with their shepherd, Stakh (“Blumke Di Zhidovke” Blumke the Jewess), and he also strained his ears to hear the intimate love patter of a young bride and groom (“Hanele un Nocheml”). He was elated by Zippora the halutsa (pioneer in Eretz Israel) and wanted to hear from her the secret of the strength and courage which led her to leave her “native beloved shtetl” in order to keep watch at night in the Kibbutz and defend her land (“Halutsim-Libe”).
During family celebrations, Gebirtig was truly full of happiness and youth. He was full of joy and delight when he married off his first daughter. He stood with his arms open and laughed loudly and, beaming and shining, sang out the happiness that had been bestowed upon him. This was the happiness of every Jewish father who sees their children married:
“Play, musicians, play with gusto,
My first daughter is getting married;
Oh, only God knows our joy,
And others who have daughters”.
Just as, in every moment of sorrow, Mordechai Gebirtig's songs entwined a strand of joy, in every celebration he entwined a note of sadness. Every Jew carries in his heart a continuous pain, pain from which there was no healing. So Gebirtig, while dancing at his daughter’s wedding, sang with tears in his eyes:
“When I will hear the last music played,
Will I stop in tears, thinking:
I gave away already the last daughter,
What is the meaning in all this?”
In all his songs and poems Gebirtig spoke from his heart. His topics and motifs had their roots in the same wells of life from which all his brothers in art drank. His songs became near and dear to all the Polish Jews. His poetry was deeply human and Jewish at the same time and its content reflected the individual and spiritual struggle of every Jewish person in Poland. This poetry’s content, together with the content of the other Jewish poetry, became a mirror of Polish Jewry.
The Popularity of Mordechai Gebirtig in Poland before the war was great. He was beloved by all parts of society, beginning with the intelligentsia, who found in him a genuine Yiddish poet, and ending with the common Jew, who saw in him the genuine folk singer – one of them, who sung about their pain and joy in day-to-day life.
At the time of the war
September 1939. The Nazi beast spread itself over the Polish towns. Anxiety and horror, injustice and disgrace, forced labor and the yellow patches, terror and death – became daily phenomena. The Jews stood defenseless and helpless against the iron wall o