A Yiddish typewriter seen from above. The keys are circular.

The Documentary: Yiddish Glory

Specials | Feb 3, 2023

During World War Two, approximately 1.6 million Soviet, Polish and Romanian Jews survived by escaping to Soviet Central Asia and Siberia, avoiding imminent death. Many of them wrote music about the horrors as the Holocaust unfolded. A miraculous discovery in the Vernadsky National Library in Kyiv revealed a collection of Yiddish music created during the 1940s that documented their numerous traumas. These songs were collected by amateur and professional poets, and then organized by the Ukrainian folklorist Moisei Beregovsky. However, the archive was confiscated by the KGB after the end of the war. The songs were never performed since, in public or in private.

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