CHILDHOOD YEARS - KINDER YORN
Lyrics: Ida Rozhanskaya (based on Mordechai Gebirtig’s original lyrics)
Music: Mordechai Gebirtig
Arrangement: Alice Zawadzki
This is a remake of a popular Yiddish theater song,“Childhood Years,” written originally by Mordechai Gebirtig, a Polish songwriter from Krakow. Ida Rozhanskaya, a Polish refugee who spent part of the war in Almaty, Kazakhstan, created this song afterher son, Moyshe Rozhansky, was killed during the Stalingrad Battle of 1942. Unlike Gebirtig’s piece, which idealizes the childhood of a Jewish boy in a small Jewish town, Rozhansky’s
version asserts that no matter what happens in the future, life without her son is devoid of purpose. Between June 1941 and the end of 1942, 386,492 evacuees and refugees, many of them Jews, found temporary homes in Kazakhstan.
Mordechai Gebirtig, was killed in the Krakow ghetto in 1942.
English
Yiddish Transliteration
Years of childhood, your childhood,
forever you will stay in my memory.
Whenever I think of those years,
My heart crawls and I feel sad.
O how far from me you are lost.
During those years – fresh beautiful flowers
You used to bring for me when you found
them
Those are sad years
Difficult, terrifying ones
Took the beautiful time away.
Here I see a little Moyshele
I kiss his red beautiful cheeks
His blue eyes are full with charm
They sink into my heart
I thought the world was mine.
Oh my child, I used to love you
I never used to take you to kheyder
Never hit you with a stick or hand
You never knew it
Not a single scar is left on you from me.
In my mind still stands the little house,
where I gave birth to you with so much pain.
There I still see your cradle,
it still stands at its place.
Oh how fast you flew away from me.
Years of childhood, I lost you.
I lost my peace with them too
I have no courage, no purpose
Because you are so far away
I curse the day when I was born.
Kinder yorn, dayne kinderyorn,
Shtendik lign zey in mayn zikorn,
Ven ikh bin fun dir fatrakht,
Tut mir vey gants gut mayn hartz
Okh, vi vayt du bist fun mir farforn!
Yene yorn – frishe sheyne blumen
Flegst mir brengen, ven du flegst zey
kumen
Ot di yorn troyerike
Shvere, moreshhoyrerdike
Zey hobn yene sheyne tsayt farnumen.
Ot ze ikh mayn moyshele dem kleynem,
Ikh kush zayne bekelekh royte, sheyne
Di bloye oygn ful mit kheyn
Krikhn tsu mir in harts arayn
Ikh hob gemeynt di gantse velt iz mayne
Okh mayn kind, vi ikh fleg dikh dokh libn
Dikh in kheyder keynmol nit getribn
Nit keyn knup, nit keyn hant
Iz dokh dir gornit bakant
Fun mir keyn tseykhn iz dir nit geblibn.
Ot ze ikh di shtub far mayne oygn
Vu ikh hob dikh azoy shver ertsoygn
Un dos betl ze ikh dort
Shteyt af yenem zelbn ort
Okh vi shnel du bis fin mir farfloygn.
Kinder yorn – ikh hob zey ongevoyrn,
Mit zey mayn gantse ru hob ikh farloyrn
Nit keyn mut, nit keyn tsvek
Vayl du bit azoy vayt avek
Un ikh farshelt dem tog fun mayn geboyrn.
Source Documents & Recordings
DEVELOPED BY DUMASTAR
Source: VNLU, fond 190, delo 151, ll. 46, 50, 51, 52, 53.