Tomasz Herzog ‘Zog nit keynmol az du geyst dem letstn veg’ (Never say that you are walking the final road), also known as ‘The Partisans’ Song’, is perhaps the best-known of the Yiddish songs created during the Holocaust. It was written by the young Vilna poet Hirsh Glik, and based on a pre-existing melody by the Soviet-Jewish composer Dimitri Pokrass. Inspired by the news of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, the song was adopted as the official anthem of the Vilna partisans shortly after it was composed in 1943, and spread with remarkable rapidity to other ghettos and camps. The song is powerful and defiantly optimistic, acknowledging Jewish suffering in the past and present, and urging the Jewish people to continue fighting for their survival. It is one of the most frequently performed songs at Holocaust commemoration ceremonies.
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Never say that you are walking the final road,
Though leaden skies obscure blue days;
The hour we have been longing for will still come,
Our steps will drum – we are here!
From green palm-land to distant land of snow,
We arrive with our pain, with our sorrow,
And where a spurt of our blood has fallen,
There will sprout our strength, our courage.
The morning sun will tinge our today with gold,
And yesterday will vanish with the enemy,
But if the sun and the dawn are delayed –
Like a watchword this song will go from generation to generation.
This song is written with blood and not with lead,
It’s not a song about a bird that is free,
A people, between falling walls,
Sang this song with pistols in their hands.
So never say that you are walking the final road
Though leaden skies obscure blue days.
The hour we have been longing for will still come –
Our steps will drum – we are here!
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Reference: Shirli Gilbert, Music in the Holocaust: Confronting Life in the Nazi Ghettos and Camps, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 71.
Source: http://holocaustmusic.ort.org/…/vilna/zog-nit-keynmol/
The online database of Kazerne Dossin contains the available portraits of victims and deportation lists from Mechelen.
La banque d’images de Kazerne Dossin contient les portraits de déportés dont nous disposons ainsi que les listes de transport reprenant les noms des personnes parties de Malines
De beeldbank van Kazerne Dossin bevat de beschikbare portretten van de slachtoffers en de lijsten van de transporten die vanuit Mechelen vertrokken.
The media collection of Yad Vashem’s International School for Holocaust Studies acquired this month – July 2016 – the DVDs of two of our documentary films :
1) The 2016 film of the premiere play “Celui Qui M’A Rendu Mon Âme” – the French-spoken adaptation of the play “Who returned my soul… “ originally by Kelly D. Brock – that retells the stories of 10 holocaust survivors – now by students of the Saint-Sépulcre school in Liege , Belgium (Philippe Renette – Centre Scolaire S2J.eu / Michel van der Burg – michelvanderburg.com). Online available and documented via this post CELUI QUI M’A RENDU MON ÂME.
2) The 2012 documentary “Transport XX to Auschwitz” – a film by Karen Lynne & Richard Bloom and Michel van der Burg. The attack on this 20th deportation train in Belgium – by three young men – the rescue, and the many escapes and escape attemps are documented in this film by the first-hand accounts of one of the attackers, people that jumped from the train and survivors who returned from Auschwitz. The film is online available and fully documented via this post Documentary film “Transport XX to Auschwitz”.
Link to the International School for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem , Jerusalem , Israel
April 19, 2015. A new edition of our documentary “Transport XX to Auschwitz” is now publicly available online. This new – 2nd – edition with the YouTube title Transport XX to Auschwitz – current version has the latest statistics on the escapes and other updates available.
Full information on this documentary is posted here on this site.
Either watch this film on YouTube via this link (click image) :
Or watch the film here in this post below :
“Transport XX to Auschwitz” – European Theater Premiere – Festival of Tolerance | May, 2014, Zagreb, Croatia
Croatian subtitles (ministry-of-subtitles.com) and English subtitles (michelvanderburg•com).
EN : Transport XX to Auschwitz – Thursday, 22.5.2014, 17:45 – Cinema Tuškanac
During the Shoah, the Nazis, in their quest for the final solution of the Jewish question, utilized thousands of trains from Germany and the occupied countries to transport 3,000,000 Jews to the concentration and death camps. This is the little known, true story of a most remarkable and heroic rescue attempt which occurred on April 19, 1943, the first night of the Passover, at the same time that the Warsaw Ghetto uprising began, some 720 miles away. On that night, Transport XX departed Mechelen, Belgium at 10 p. m. with 1631 Jewish men, women and children for Auschwitz- Birkenau. Half an hour later, it was stopped by three young Belgians armed with only 1 pistol, pliers and a hurricane lamp. This was the only documented rescue attempt/attack on a death train during the Shoah.
HR : Transport XX za Auschwitz – Četvrtak, 22.5.2014, 17:45 – Kino Tuškanac
Za vrijeme holokausta nacisti su težeći „konačnom rješenju židovskog pitanja“ upotrijebili tisuće vlakova iz Njemačke i okupiranih zemalja kako bi transportirali tri milijuna Židova u koncentracijske logore ili logore smrti. Ovo je malo poznata istinita priča o znakovitom i herojskom pokušaju spašavanja koji se dogodio 19. travnja 1943., na prvi dan Pashe, u isto vrijeme kada je započeo Ustanak u varšavskom getu, 1200 kilometara dalje. Te je noći u 22 sata Transport XX krenuo iz Mechelena u Belgiji sa 1631 židovskih muškaraca, žena i djece prema Auschwitz- Birkenau. Pola sata kasnije zaustavila su ga tri mlada Belgijanca naoružana samo jednim pištoljem, kliještima i petrolejkom. Ovo je jedini dokumentirani pokušaj spašavanja zatočenika, odnosno napad na vlak smrti za vrijeme holokausta.
May 28, 2014. Zagreb. Festival of Tolerance. The audience at the Festival of Tolerance valued the film “Transport XX to Auschwitz” with a very good average grade of 4.3 (out of 5).
