Product Description
These six songs have become icons of remembrance of the
six million Jews who died in the Holocaust. They are traditionally played on
Holocaust Day, which is on the 28th day of the Hebrew month of Nissan
in Israel, or January 27th in the rest of the world.
Unter Dyne Vyse Shteren (Under the Starry Sky)
was written by Avraham Sutskover, a leading Yiddish
poet, while trapped in the ghetto of Vilna, in July 1943. Days before the
ghetto was destroyed and all the Jews murdered, Sutskover escaped to the forest
with his wife. He reached Russia, and in 1947 moved to Palestine. He died in
Israel in 2010 at the age of 96. The poem was set to music by Avraham Brodna, a
simple laborer in the Vilna ghetto who died in a concentration camp.
Ani Maamin (I Believe): The words to this simple song are of the Jewish prayer
"I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah." The tune
is attributed to Azriel David Festig, a leading Warsaw hazzan (cantor)
who died in the Holocaust. The song was performed after the war by Rabbi Shaul
Yedidia Eliezer Taub, the Admor (Rabbinical leader) of the Modzitz
Hassidic sect, and has become the iconic song of the remembrance in the
Hassidic community.
Shtiller Shtiller (Hush Hush) was written by Alexander Volkovitzky, then a 12-year-old
boy, in the Vilna Ghetto in the spring of 1943. Volkovitzky, who wrote the
melody for a song contest organized to encourage the cultural life of the
ghetto, eventually came to Israel where he (under the name Alexander Tamir)
became a leading pianist and music educator. The words are by Shmerke Kacserginsky,
a leading poet of Vilna, who later escaped the Holocaust and migrated to South
America.
Papirossen
(Cigarettes) actually predates the Holocaust by 15 years.
It was written by Yiddish actor and composer Herman Yablokoff in 1922 in
Grodno, Poland. Yablokoff later immigrated to America, where he produced a
musical Papirossen that incorporated the song. It was later made famous
by the Barry Sisters, a Yiddish popular music group.
Donna Donna was written by Shalom Secunda, with words by Aaron
Zeitlin for the Yiddish musical Esterke in 1940. Though the song
originally related to the 600-year-old legend of a Polish king who married a
Jewess, it quickly became associated with the Holocaust because of its haunting
message. The song has entered the popular folk repertoire, with canonical renditions
by Joan Baez, Theodore Bikel, and many others.
Hatikva (the Hope) is Israel's national anthem. The words are by Naftali Zvi
Imber, and the tune is a traditional eastern European tune.
You are welcome to try some of my other arrangements. In addition
to the songs offered on this site (you can see them at http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/search?Ntt=Yoel+Epstein
), I have arranged three songs from the Holocaust, which I arranged and
distribute for free on IMSLP. You can find them at http://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Ravpapa.
If you need arrangements of any of these songs for special
combinations of instruments, feel free to contact me,
and I will try to accommodate. Write me at yoelepst@gmail.com. Hope you enjoy.
This product was created by a member of ArrangeMe, Hal Leonard's global self-publishing community of independent composers, arrangers, and songwriters. ArrangeMe allows for the publication of unique arrangements of both popular titles and original compositions from a wide variety of voices and backgrounds.