Warsaw Ghetto Uprising 1943 sung by Paul Robeson

The Warsaw Ghetto Rebellion - April 19 - May 16, 1943
Sung by Paul Robeson at the 1949 Moscow Concert (live)
in Yiddish and historical pictures of the burning of the Ghetto by the Germans.

This famous song was sung by Robeson as part of his legendary Moscow Concert of June 13, 1949.which Paul Robeson gave while on his tour in the Soviet Union, at the time under the Stalin oppressive dictatorship.
This song was sung by him as a tribute to the Jewish partisan fighters of the Ghetto. It was also a surprise that Robeson gave at the Concert. His son tells of the introduction of the song from his father's memoirs that: "... One could hear a pin drop during my father remarks about the deep and enduring cultural ties between the Jewish communities of the Soviet Union and the United States, about the common tradition of the great Jewish writer Sholem Aleichem, and about the continued vitality of the Yiddish language. Finally he announced that he would sing a song of the Jewish partisans who fought to the death against their Fascist oppressors in the Warsaw Ghetto. Since the song had to be sung in Yiddish, he would explain the lyrics in Russian, as follows:

'Never say that you have reached the very end
When leaden skies a bitter future may portend;
For sure the hour for which we yearn will not arrive
Arid our marching steps will thunder: we survive'.

For a moment there was no sound from the stunned audience; then a single intrepid young woman stood up and applauded, and the entire audience joined in a swelling wane of applause before my father could sing a single note. Only this response to my fathers remarks remains on the recording; Stalin's censors simply cut out his remarks, and they have disappeared..."

The Song of the Wamaw Ghetto Rebellion sung in Yiddish (Zog Nit Keynmol) - remains an a crowning jewel of this recording of the Concert. The combination of power and pathos with which my father delivered this song transfixed his listeners. When he finished, the audience released its accumulated tension like an explosive charge. Although his listeners included many of Moscows Jewish intellectual elite who were waiting for Stalins axe to fell on them, the great majority were Russian members of the Party elite which was being decimated by a purge. Jews and Russians alike, in some places seated side-by-side, were either walking in the shadow of death or had lost someone close...
After that first release, the ovation continued to swell and recede in a series of waves which ebbed and flowed. People stood, applauded and cried out; they called my father by his patronymic-Pavel Vasilevich; some who were total strangers fell info each others arms and wept; still others sat silently with tears streaming down their faces. The first part of the audiences response is captured on this recording, but the rest has been cut by the censors. Still, the sound of this cry of hope is unforgettable, and there is little doubt that it was heard by the Master himself.
Thus it was that Paul Robeson, one of the greatest voices of the century, gave expression to the suffering not only of Soviet Jews but also to the countless victims of Stalins purges....."

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Paul
• Robeson
• Warsaw
• Ghetto
• Rebellion
• Moscow
• Concert
• Yiddish
• Jewish
• Partisan's
• Song

[obiwanobiwan13]

Shalom, Paul Robeson: champion of the African-Americans and Jews........

The voice that expresses the soul of the opressed now and forever.

[BrickLaneBetty]

Plaese read his recently revised wikipedia page. I spent over a hundred hours on it. There are now links to his work with Labor, the international brigades and much. much more.

Shalom

[mrfreecrack]

the warsaw ghetto in wich the jews had their own democratic government, as they chose to live there?the warsaw ghetto that the germans only guarded 3 sides of?

cuz the only warsaw ghetto i know of wasnt like that thus isnt like gaza even remotely.

i missed the part where the population increased in the warsaw ghetto as it has in gaza.

must be another warsaw ghetto, cuz the one in poland was the exact opposite of what gaza is.

[mavra1910]

@1129abbo829 ,,please, spare us your bullshit.,,

No one's buying into it anymore... The Warsaw ghetto fighters did not go and blow themselves up in the discos and shops of Berlin or any other city... The Warszaw ghetto rebels attacked soldiers only.

[kingstowngalway]

Very well done video! Ironically, Jurgen Stroop, who commanded the SS assault on the Warsaw Ghetto, was later incarcerated by Polish Stalinists in Warsaw's Mokotow Prison alongside Kazimierz Moczarski, a veteran of the Polish Resistance. Moczarski later recalled the experience in his memoir, "Conversations with an Executioner." I have read a great deal about Nazism and the Holocaust. However, I highly recommend Moczarski's memoir. It reveals better than any other book how a Nazi thinks.

[ajtinkle]

Not just is he a great singer, but he has great pronunciation of Yiddish in this song and from what I've heard, a great pronunciation of Mandarin when singing the Chinese national anthem.

[gcpropertymanagement]

Thank you, Kenn Burch. It is a statement for the right of a people not to be murdered.

[KennBurch]

Paul Robeson sang this as a protest of Stalin's postwar persecution of Soviet Jews-and he sang it to Stalin's face at that concert.

Remember that, when you hear people accuse Paul Robeson as an unquestioning follower of the CP line(he was never even IN the party, btw, he just admired the Soviet Union for being less racist towards blacks than the U.S. was in those days). And he stood his ground as all those Stalinist antisemites booed him after the song.

[KingOfTheCornChips]

The Dislike came from Hitler

[CommunistWarrior1917]

@Musicofthissphere Did you notice my username?

[Musicofthissphere]

@CommunistWarrior1917 Umm, I'm anti-Nazi. You are a fascist piece of human garbage. Get that through your brain damaged head. Thanks!

[CommunistWarrior1917]

@Musicofthissphere Get lost! People like you are no better than Nazis!