Re: zog nit keynmol

[sylvia schildt <creativa...>]

i went to the expert - fortunately s very dear friend and former mitl shul
mate who is a scholar on this period and was the one consulted and credited
on the making of Partisans of Vilna. It's very illuminating for us all.

I quote his e-mail:


Sylvichke:
There is a learned controversy about the date and occasion of Glik's writing
"Zog nit".  Shmerke Kaczerginski ("Ikh bin geven a partizan") says Glik
mentioned it to him at a May Day program in 1943, saying it was inspired by
the recent Warsaw Ghetto uprising.  I am a great fan of Kaczerginski, but he
is not the most reliable of chroniclers.  All other sources place the date
of the composition earlier, some as early as 1942.  Abba Kovner dated it to
January 1943, in honor of the first anniversary of the founding of FPO.  It
was of course adopted by FPO as its hymn, so that it is in any case
primarily associated with Vilna, and only subsequently with the Jewish
resistance in general.  The Warsaw Ghetto connection is not a
"toes"--Kaczerginski is a primary source, after all--but it is only only one
possibility among several.  I like the Kovner version myself, but I am
prejudiced, having fallen in love with Kovner during the work on "Partisans
of Vilna".  (Now on DVD, Aviva Kempner tells me.)
Zay gezunt,
Sholem



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