ared 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 for all those who were looking for a path to resistance. In the following years, when the Nazi boots walked over the Polish towns and villages, and the Jews were closed in crowded ghettos, the song “Undzere Shtetl Brent” became a signal to the fight and a call to the fighters in all the resistance groups in the camps and forests: it became a hymn. And thus the former romantic and dreamer, extoller of the twilight voices and eternal consoler, turned into a caller to revolt and revenge; a popular poet who stirred up the Jews of Poland.
The Thematics of Gebirtig’s Songs
If you want to learn about the life of the Jews in Poland – go to the songs of Mordechai Gebirtig. There was no tiny corner in the life of every Jew which Gebirtig would not meticulously look into and later describe in his works. The everyday worries of the simple Jewish people, their desperate, harsh struggle for existence and earning, the simple everyday moments of joy and sadness during work hours, breaks and free time after work, the continuous efforts of parents to provide for their children more than they had for themselves, the regular worry of raising children and hopes for the children’s happiness, the efforts of parents to give their children an education, and the apprehension that they might depart the straight and narrow – all these became topics of Mordechai Gebirtig’s songs.
He sung about Jewish life from its beginning to the end. Often, even before the child was born, the parents argued about its name. Such a case Gebirtig had shown with his good-natured example:
So why argue now
And waste words –
May be there will be twins –
And it may happen – two girls.
And how does Mordechai Gebirtig put Jewish children to sleep? First of all he taught them not to cry from hunger. It did not fit a Jewish little one not to be able to control his instincts:
So sleep, my poor little girl,
Because the sleep soothes the need,
Your doll is also hungry,
Still it does not cry and demand bread…
It was easy for him to write this way while his father went fa