Various Artists
Yiddish Glory: The Lost Songs of World War II
Six Degrees www.sixdegreesrecords.com
(A version of this review was published in the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin.)
During the Second World
War, ethnomusicologists at the Kiev Cabinet for Jewish Culture set out to
preserve the new Yiddish songs documenting the experiences of Jews fighting the
Nazis in the Red Army, as well as those working on the home fronts, and songs
reporting on such atrocities as the massacre at Babi Yar. Following Stalin’s
post-war anti-Semitic purge, these songs were thought lost. However, the lyrics
of many of the songs were rediscovered in the 1990s in unmarked boxes found in
the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine. Yiddish Glory:The Lost Songs of World
War II is an extraordinary album –
featuring five singers and a group of superb instrumentalists – recorded in
Toronto that documents some of those songs.
Among these fascinating songs are “Shpatsir in Vald (A Walk in the
Forest),” sung by Sophie Milman, in
which a young woman and a young soldier about to go off to fight Hitler’s army
say their farewells; “A Shturemvint (A Storm Wind),” sung by Psoy Korolenko, a lyric that promises
to keep fighting until fascism and Hitler are defeated; and “Babi Yar,” also
sung by Korolenko, based on witness accounts of the 1941 massacre of more than
33,000 Jews.
An extensive booklet includes an essay about the project, notes on all
of the songs and the lyrics in Yiddish with English translations. Yiddish
Glory is certainly one of the most powerful albums of Jewish music released
in recent years.
--Mike
Regenstreif
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