Overview
- Description
- In the Vilna ghetto, educator Rakhele Pupko-Krinski and poet Shmerke Kaczerginski were members of the "Paper Brigade"- group of intellectuals who risked their lives to conceal Vilna's Judaic treasures from Nazi vandals. After learning that Pupko-Krinski had hidden her child, Sarah, outside of the ghetto, Kaczerginski wrote The Lonely Child as a tribute to Sarah and all Jewish children who had been forced into hiding by the war. The poem was set to music by composer Yankl Krimski, a theater artist who is believed to have been murdered in an Estonian labor camp toward the end of the war.
Pupko-Krinski's sympathetic Polish housekeeper, Wiktoria Rodziewicz, raised Sarah as her own. Fearing betrayal by acquaintances, Rodziewicz eventually moved to a nearby village where she could live in relative safety. After years spent in the ghetto and several labor camps, Pupko-Krinski reunited with her daughter, who no longer remembered her. Kaczerginski recorded the song in a displaced persons camp in Bavaria ca. 1946, dedicating his performance to Sarah and Rakhele. Some 50 years later, Sarah heard this recording for the first time while visiting the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Wexner Learning Center. - Alternate Title
- Dos einte kind
- Date
-
Composed:
approximately 1943
- Contributor
-
Lyricist:
Szmerke Kaczerginski
Composer: Yankl Krimski
- Biography
-
Shmerke Kaczerginski (1908-1954), Yiddish writer and cultural activist, born in Vilna, Lithuania. orphaned at age six and raised by his grandfather, Kaczerginski learned the lithographer's trade. As a youth, he was involved with outlawed Communist groups and was arrested several times, serving a lengthy prison term. In the 1930s, two of his revolutionary poems became popular in Poland. He wrote short stories with a radical bent and was a correspondent and reporter for literary publications, including the semilegal leftist press in Poland and the New York Communist daily Morgn-frayhayt. During the first period of Nazi occupation, Kaczerginski wandered through villages and towns posing as a deaf mute; after many difficulties, he ended up in the Vilna ghetto. Kaczerginski was a member of the Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye (United Partisans Organization; FPO). In September 1943, Kaczerginski, along with Avrom and Freydke Sutzkever and other members of the FPO, escaped from the Vilna ghetto as part of an organized group of fighters just before its liquidation. They joined a Soviet partisan unit in the Naroch Forests, where Kaczerginski fought as a partisan until liberation in July 1944. Kaczerginski’s books describe the destruction of Vilna, the partisan struggle, and his own experiences during the Holocaust period: Khurbn Vilne (The Destruction of Vilna; 1947), Partizaner geyen (Partisans on the Move; 1947), and Ikh bin geven a partizan (I Was a Partisan; 1952). Refer to extended biography here: http://yleksikon.blogspot.com/2019/02/shmarye-shmerke-katsherginski-szmerke.html
- Format
- MP3
Physical Details
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- You do not require further permission from the Museum to access this archival media.
- Copyright
- Copyright Undetermined
- Conditions on Use
- Owner of copyright, if any, is undetermined. It is possible this is an orphan work. It is the responsibility of anyone interested in reproducing, broadcasting, or publishing content to determine copyright holder and secure permission, or perform a diligent Fair Use analysis.
Keywords & Subjects
- Geographic Name
- Kaunas (Lithuania)
Administrative Notes
- Legal Status
- Licensed Agreement
- Recorded Sound Provenance
- This song was included in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's web exhibition, "Music of the Holocaust" https://www.ushmm.org/exhibition/music/ curated by the Museum's musicologist.
- Recorded Sound Notes
- Performed by Shmerke Kaczerginski, ca. 1946
- Recorded Sound Source
- Bret Werb
- Record last modified:
- 2024-06-10 10:46:25
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn671449
Also in "Music of the Holocaust" web exhibition
Songs included in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's web exhibition, "Music of the Holocaust" https://www.ushmm.org/exhibition/music/. Music was heard in many ghettos, concentration camps, and partisan outposts of Nazi-controlled Europe. While popular songs dating from before the war remained attractive as escapist fare, the ghetto, camp, and partisan settings also gave rise to a repertoire of new works. These included topical songs inspired by the latest gossip and news, and songs of personal expression that often concerned the loss of family and home. Classical music—instrumental works, art songs, opera—was also produced and performed during this period, notably by prisoners at the Theresienstadt (Terezín) ghetto and transit camp in Czechoslovakia, as well as in several other ghettos and camps. For many victims of Nazi brutality, music was an important means of preserving and asserting their humanity. Such music—particularly the topical songs—also serves as a form of historical documentation. Like “audio snapshots,” these works offer a telling glimpse into the events and emotions that their creators and original audiences experienced firsthand.
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