OBODIVKE CAMP - IN OBODIVKER LAGER
Lyrics: Boris Zitserman, recorded from Sonya Reyber; Zunye Shtindler (17); Genye Soyfer (8 July 1945), former prisoners of Bershad Ghetto
Music: Folk, based on the tune of Yiddish folk song “Hey, Jankoe”
Arrangement: Drew Jurecka
English translation and transliteration: Eli Jany
Written in 1942 by a teenage poet, Boris Zitserman (1926–2006), and set to the cheerful yet satirical tune of a pre-war folk song called “Dzhankoye,” the words document the daily routine in the Bershad ghetto, the largest ghetto of Transnistria. The song is based on memories of Avrom-Itsye, a real-life deportee from Edine, in what is now northern Moldova. The owner of a thin horse and a wagon, he rode around the ghetto, collecting bodies and dumping them behind the ghetto’s iron gates. Avrom-Itsye was one of 20,000 deportees from the Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina regions who ended up in the Bershad Ghetto by the end of 1941. His entire family was killed on the way to Bershad.
English
Yiddish Transliteration
If you travel to Balanivke,
it’s not far to Obodivke –
there’s a small camp there.
Jews endure day and night,
without drinking or eating.
Hitler, the thief, says: That’s how it must be.
Refrain:
Oh, woe, troubles, troubles—
The Jews are being brought to slaughter.
We wait for a more fortunate day.
And the corpses lie and rot
and you begin to shudder,
and why does a Jew suffer like this?
Avrom-Itsye sits in the wagon.
It is a shame for him to admit it;
he’s already making the sixth trip today.
The administration ordered him
to take care of all the corpses,
and his hair’s standing on end with joy.
In the kolkhoz there in a corner,
a girl dies there, oh, of hunger
and here they play a round of poker.
And the Bershad cemetery
accepts into the world to come
as many people as there are.
Oh, woe, troubles, troubles—
The Jews are being brought to slaughter.
We wait for a more fortunate day.
Az me fort keyn balanivke,
iz nisht vayt fu n obodivke –
dortn iz a lagerl faran.
zitsn yidn op meslesn,
nit getrunken, nit gegesn
gitler ganev zogt: azoy darf es zayn.
prepev:
oy, vey, tsores, tsores
zaynen yidn af kapores
vart men afn mazldikn tog.
un di meysim lign un foyln
un dos layb heybt on tsu groyln
un farvos kumt op azoy a yid?
avrom-itsye zitst in vogn
s’iz im a kharpe oystsuzogn
er makht shoyn haynt dem zekstn tur.
di uprave hot im geheysn
er zol farnemen ale meysim
un far freyd groylt im azh di hor.
in kolkhoz dort in a vinkl
shtarbt a meydl, oy, fun hunger,
un do geyt men poker a kon.
un der bershader beysoylem,
nemt zikh tsu af yenem oylem
vifl mentshn s’iz dokh nor faran.
oy, vey, tsores, tsores
zaynen yidn af kapores
vart men afn mazldikn tog.
Source Documents & Recordings
DEVELOPED BY DUMASTAR
Source: Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine (VNLU), fond 190, folder 147, ll. 166–168.