OUT OF THE DEPTHS

Music of longing.

Sometime in the last months of World War II, a group of Eastern European writers assembled a book of songs. Drawing on folk and learned traditions, this collection surfaced only a few years ago. This book by Toltz, an ethnomusicologist, and Boucher, a migration scholar, offers a translation and commentary on these songs. More than that, it provides a nuanced history of the artistic yearnings of Holocaust victims. These are poems of despair, of loss framed with a “gallows humor.” They are also songs of faith and hope: cries to continue in the face of fear. And there are also songs of politics—marches and hymns to be sung while fighting. The Yiddish is fluently translated here, conveying that blend of humor and resolve that never lets the singers fall into self-pity. “No more grieving, no memorial,” asserts one. “I shake my fist at the sky” says another. One stirring march offers this defiance: “Stop the wailing, halt the crying, miracles may soon be flying.” It ends: “Although countless lives are lost, a song of suffering soon emerges, for next generations, light for all the nations.” These songs straddle the inherited folk melodies of Jewish life and the newly fashioned rhymes of men and women wrenching their vernacular into heartfelt lyric. Readers who know little of the Holocaust will be jolted into empathy. Yiddishists will find these songs a valuable addition to the growing body of personal writing in a language newly studied in the 21st century. One contributor to the book thought of the work as a “tombstone” to the dead. Instead, we should consider it a libretto to keep hope alive.

A collection of Yiddish songs of defiance and despair, newly edited and translated for living performance.