David Dalle
Thursday January 18th, 2024 with David Dalle
Yiddish Glory, lost Jewish songs of WWII, with guest Professor Anna Shternshis. Farewell to Rashid Khan.

A special show today as I am joined by guest Professor Anna Shternshis, who is Professor of Yiddish studies and the director of the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto. She was instrumental in recovering lost songs from Soviet ethnomusicologist Moisei Beregovsky, who wrote down hundreds of new Yiddish songs in the Soviet Union during WWII. These songs were written mostly by amateurs, Jewish soldiers in the Red Army, Jewish wives and mothers working on the home front, as well as refugees and survivors of Nazi terror in Poland and Ukraine. Beregovsky hoped to publish these songs after the war, but he was swept up in Stalin's 1952 anti-Jewish purges and sent to the Gulag, where he died thinking the songs were lost forever. In the late 90's, some unmarked boxes were found in the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine in Kiev. These contained mostly handwritten copies of the songs. Professor Shternshis and Russian musician and Slav expert Psoy Korolenko collaborated in the recovery of these songs. Some had music written, but most were just lyrics. Many of these recovered songs were constructed, sometimes using popular Soviet Yiddish tunes from the 1920's and 30's, and with a few interesting and unexpected choices like a song by Alfred Schnittke. Eighteen of these songs were recorded and released in the album "The Lost Songs of World War II" by the ensemble Yiddish Glory, in 2018. They will be performing these songs at the NAC Fourth Stage next Thursday, January the 25th. https://nac-cna.ca/en/event/35483