Mordechai/Mordkhe Gebirtig
Born as Marcus Bertig/Bartig, son of Isac (Krakow, 1877) 
Mordechai Gebirtig
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mordechai
Gebirtig, born Mordekhai
Bertig (Yiddish:
מרדכי
געבירטיג) (b. 1877, Krak—w - d. 1942, Krak—w) was a Yiddish poet and
songwriter, regarded as one of the most influential and popular writers of
Yiddish songs and poems.
Today,
Gebirtig is perhaps best known internationally for his song, "S'brent" (It is burning), written in 1938 in response to the
1936 pogrom of Jews
in the shtetl (small
town) of Przytyk.
It sounded an alarm for the approaching calamity that would become known as the
Holocaust. "S'brent" was sung in the ghettos of Nazi-occupied Europe. Since then the song, in the original
Yiddish and in its Hebrew translation titled "Ha-Ayyarah
Bo'eret"
(העיירה
בוערת, "Our Little Town is Burning!" -
hence the occasional reference to a Yiddish title, "Undzer Shtetl
Brent!"), continues
to be widely performed in the context of Holocaust
commemoration.
Mordecai
Gebirtig (1877-1942) was born in Krakow and lived in its Jewish working-class quarter all his
life, one which was ended by a Nazi bullet in the Krakow
Ghetto on the infamous "Bloody Thursday" of June 4th, 1942. He is
the preeminent "folk" artist in Yiddish literature and song. He was self-taught
in music, played the shepherd's pipe
well, and tapped out tunes on the piano with one finger. He earned his
livelihood as a furniture worker; music and theater were avocations.
From
1906 he was a member of the Jewish Amateur Troupe in Krakow. He also wrote
songs and theater reviews for Der sotsial-demokrat, the Yiddish organ of the Jewish
Social-Democratic Party, to which he belonged. This party was in
effect the Galician Jewish Labour Bund, which after World War I
fused with the Polish Bund to become the great Yiddishist party of the
Polish Jewish proletariat, which called for Jewish cultural
autonomy in a democratic and socialist Poland.
It was
in such an environment that Gebirtig developed, encouraged by such professional
writers and Yiddishist culural activists as Avrom Reyzn, who for
a time lived and published a journal in Krakow. His talent was his own, but he
took the language, themes, types, tone and timbre of his art from his
surroundings, in some measure continuing the musical tradition of the popular
Galician cabaret entertainers known as the Broder Singers,
who in turn were beholden to the yet older and still vital tradition of the batkhn's (wedding jester's)
improvisatory art.
Gebirtig
served for five years in the Austro-Hungarian
army and it was only in 1920, under the second Polish Republic, that he published
his first collection of songs, significantly entitled Folkstimlekh ('of the
folk'). His songs spread quickly even before they were published, and many
people regarded them as folksongs whose author or authors were anonymous.
Adopted by leading Yiddish players such as Molly Picon,
Gebirtig's songs became staples of numerous regular as well as improvised
theatrical productions wherever Yiddish
theatre was performed. It is not an exaggeration to say that Gebirtig's
songs were sung and lovingly sung the world over.
Gebirtig's
art appears to have won full recognition in the new Poland. This is gratifying,
yet it is regrettable that too often his repertoire is rendered in a
sentimental, even a saccharine manner. (22a) We need to remember that Gebirtig
is most famous for his song "Undzer shtetl brent," which was written
as early as 1938 following a pogrom in Pszytyk and which was
later adopted by the Jewish youth of Krakow and others as a battlesong against
the Nazis. In his song "S'tut vey" ('It Hurts'), Gebirtig is
shattered by the absence of solidarity of all Polish citizens against the Nazi
invaders. Dated Krakow February 1940, it is a song directed against those Poles
who laughed when German soldiers humiliated and tortured old Jews in the
streets of Krakow. "Un zey! / Vis zaynen itst vi mir / Geblibn on a land.
/ Vos filn itst vi mir / Dem vildn soynes hand, / Lakhn, freyen zikh un lakhn /
In aza moment, Ven poyln's shtolts un koved / Vert azoy geshendt. / Ven poylns
vaysn odler / Valgert zikh af der erd.... / Iz dos nisht a shand / An eybiker
far zey? ('And it is they! / Who like us / Have lost a country,/ Who like us
now feel / The savage enemy's strokes. / They laugh, they make merry and laugh
/ At this hour, / When Poland's pride and honor / Are being raped, / When
Poland's White Eagle / Lies in the dirt.... / Is this not / To their eternal
shame?') (23) Gebirtig has often been called "der zinger fun der
umgekumener yidisher mase in poyln" ('the singer of the murdered Jewish
masses of Poland'. Gebirtig's song "It Hurts" expresses what most
Jews have always felt and what courageous Poles like Jan Blonski have clearly
said on this painful subject: the Poles could not have saved the Jews from their
fate and are not responsible for that fate, but they could certainly have shown
more compassion to the Jews
in their agony.
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Gebuertig Mordechaj |
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Gebirtig Szifka |
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Gebirtig Bluma |
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Gebuertig Lola |
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Siwka
Stamberger nee Gebirtig was born in Krakow in 1914 to Mordekai and Esther. She
was married to Henryk. Prior to WWII she lived in Krakow, Poland. During the
war she was in Krakow, Poland. Siwka perished in 1942 in Auschwitz, Camp. This
information is based on a Page of Testimony (displayed on left) submitted on
21-Sep-1972 by her brother-in-law Noshe Bazes