Dos einte kind The Lonely Child

Identifier
irn671449
Language of Description
English
Alt. Identifiers
  • RG-91.0089
Level of Description
Item
Source
EHRI Partner

Creator(s)

Biographical History

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

Scope and Content

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.

Note(s)

  • Performed by Shmerke Kaczerginski, ca. 1946

Subjects

Genre

This description is derived directly from structured data provided to EHRI by a partner institution. This collection holding institution considers this description as an accurate reflection of the archival holdings to which it refers at the moment of data transfer.