Re: belz

[Robert A. Rothstein <rar...>]

There are at least two Polish versions of "Belz."  The one referred to
by Cantor
Weiss (at http://www.idn.org.pl/medykon/wiersze/belz.htm) is a song by
the
Polish poet and songwriter Agnieszka Osiecka (1936-1997), inspired
either by the Yiddish original, or by the prewar Polish translation (by
L. Frey and
J. Roman), which was first published in 1935 and became a pop hit in
Poland.

In 1996 I posted to MENDELE the following, which may be of interest:

>In 5.179 David Herskovic asked which Belz was the subject of "Mayn
shtetele
>Belz"--the one near Lviv (Lemberik) in Ukraine or the one in Moldova
>(historical Bessarabia).  I don't have a definitive answer, only some
clues.
>The song was written by Jacob Jacobs (words) and Alexander Olshanetsky
(music)
>for William Siegel's 1932 play _Dos lid fun geto_ (_Song of the
Ghetto_).
>Jacobs was born in Hungary; Olshanetsky, in Odessa.  (I wasn't able to
>establish a birthplace for Siegel.)  This circumstancial evidence
suggests
>Bessarabia over Galicia.  The Bessarabian Belz is really Belts (and
that's the
>official Yiddish form as well as the Moldavian/Romanian form), but
there's a
>tradition of using _Belz_ in Yiddish for both places.

>Siegel's play, by the way, was the occasion for the theatrical (as
opposed to
>concert) debut of the great Yiddish and Russian singer Isa Kremer.

Zachary Baker, then the Head Librarian at YIVO, now curator of Judaica
and Hebraica Collections for the Stanford University Libraries, pointed
out in a subsequent posting that the _landsmanshaftn_ from both towns
claim that the song is about their hometown.

    Bob Rothstein

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