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MBM: Yes. In the Zoomer Media studio session, one of the survivors in the audience talked about how he resonated with the songs.

AS: Yes, that’s Elly Gots. He is a survivor from the Kovno ghetto in Lithuania. He said that they used to use old Yiddish or Soviet tunes to create new songs during the war. In fact, we are honored how the Holocaust survivors and the Red Army veterans react to this music – they love it, and it resonates with how they remember their youth, and how they want others to know about it.

Psoy’s genius was to pull this together. Working with the Yiddish texts alone, he had great hunches about matching lyrics to the exactly right sounding tunes. It really hit the jackpot.

MBM: An earlier article on this work talked about “Ironic Inversions” in relation to these songs. I was interested in that article about the theme of pairing music to content. In some of the songs, tragedy and disaster get conveyed through seemingly light-hearted melodies.

Psoy Korolenko: This is not the case with all the songs. The tune which “gave” the melody to one of our songs, which documented the destruction of the Jewish community in the Ukrainian town Tulchin, came from an angsty ballad about the medieval plague, and all sorrows and deaths it caused. The song “I Sit in My Tailor Shop”,  that Anna mentioned, is performed, mostly, to the music of a popular Red Army song about the invincible “tachanka” (a tank).

The tune of another song, which speaks about a Red Army soldier shooting the machine gun, sounds like something between a march and a waltz, thus rendering a complex fusion of nostalgia, anger, desperateness, and optimism. The old man’s reminiscence song starts as a quiet waltz in a minor key, when he is recalling his sons lost in the war, and dreams about the revenge; and then it goes on in a major key, in full accordance with the lyrics, which are a praise to Stalin. Some other songs sound “lighter” because their lyrics are more optimistic: these are triumphalist songs, celebrating, or anticipating, Hitler’s defeat and the end of the war. No “paradoxical” or “ironic” approach to choosing tunes was meant.

The “ironic inversions” (which is not our term) are, apparently, objective historical matters, such as the whole destiny of this repertoire, and how it’s now coming back to a new life and reinvented in a “similar but different” context. Irony in the narrow meaning of this word has little to do with all that. But the satire against the Nazi, as well as some humor and, sometimes, some bitter and wise self-irony, are indeed relevant for some of these lyrics, as well as they are for Jewish, and human, culture in general.

MBM: Murder ballads in the Anglo-American tradition have certain shared tropes and symbols, like rivers and birds. Are there similar tropes in these songs that North American listeners might be missing? Given the Soviet context are there coded symbols in them to elude the censors?

PK: On one hand, most of such tropes are in fact universal and widespread in folklore texts and folksongs of many languages and cultures. In one of our songs, winds and freezing rains are opposed to the forthcoming rainbow, this universal symbol of peace and diversity. On the other hand, some birds and trees are more typical of Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, and other places where Jews lived. Some others come to Yiddish songs from their Slavic or German environment. Some are from the Scriptures.

As for the censorship, I definitely don’t see much of it in the songs, they are ideologically correct enough, except for some “too exclusively Jewish” motifs which were sometimes self-censored, like in Anna’s example with “our people” replaced by “our peoples”. No cryptic symbols in these songs. They are simple and pure, which is exactly their strength and power.

MBM: Will you be developing more songs from this collection?

AS: We have just finished the studio recording of these songs, and about to start mastering the material. Produced by Dan Rosenberg, the project now includes nine musicians, with Psoy Korolenko, Sophie Milman, Isaac Rosenberg (12 year old) and Sergei Erdenko as vocalists. Sergei Erdenko, the leader of the Roma trio Loyko, had arranged the tunes that Psoy created for these lyrics into multi-instrument productions. Finally, we are working with the promoter Svetlana Dvoretsky, the CEO of Show One Production that put together the concert of this music, The Yiddish Glory, on creating the tour schedule.

Concurrently there are plans for two books on the project.  The first one is with Psoy, discussing the songs, their themes, and the process of adapting them to music. The other book, with Brett Werb from the United States Holocaust Museum will be the annotated publication of the book completed by Moshe Beregovski that was never published. I think that would be a wonderful project for academic use, and to finish his work properly.

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“At Night on My Bed,” by Nokhem Royznvaser, Berdichev, 1946 (Translation by Hindy Abelson, lyrics provided by Anna Shternshis)

At night while I lie on my bed
and sleep won’t visit me
I remember all that I have seen
from ‘a’ right down to ‘zee”.

The world has never witnessed a hate
so vile, nor how could they know
just how that bastard Hitler
such ghastly deeds could sow.

My mind will not allow me
one moments peace or rest
Off go to war to fight
my own flesh and blood.

They’ve burned within that fire
From day one – not long ago
And they’ll be thrilled when we destroy
this rotten, evil foe.

One is a guard in the army
a lad with two strong hands.
He’s now become a hero
throughout the Soviet land.

Another one fell victim
– a sapling merely he.
Me, his old father,
It kills from within.

Feeling lost, away from home
forsaking my own town
My angry burns within my bones,
It sears and breaks me down.

Tell me where to find some strength
in hands so fragile, frail?
Believe me if I only could,
I’d break them, make them wail.

Until that day, when we have killed
them all with our last round,
The angel of death will hover here,
and mouth his deadly sound.

And when that happy day arrives
our joy will be so grand.
that I will sing a song of praise
to Stalin and this land.

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Special thanks to Anna Shternshis and Psoy Korolenko for answering our questions and providing these songs and stories. Thanks for reading and listening.