Songs of the Holocaust

 This is one lesson that I give in classes that I usually do not teach. It includes some material that I use in projects in my own classes.

Together with the students and their homeroom teachers, I listen to five songs in different languages: two in Yiddish, one in Ladino, one in French and one in German. I tell the stories behind the songs, and we discuss whatever the students notice in and infer from the lyrics (which I have all translated into Hebrew). They always share family stories, and recognize words, phrases, sometimes names in the songs, especially in the songs in Yiddish and Ladino (there are always a few students whose (great)grandparents speak or spoke either of those languages).

Here are the five songs that we listen to:

1) Mayn Schvester Haye (My Sister Chaya) - Binem Heller/Chava Alberstein & the Klezmatics

2) Arvoles lloran por lluvia (written after 1492) - sung by rabbi Shuviel Maaravi

3) Die Kinder von Izieu - Reinhard Mey

4) Nuit et Brouillard - Jean Ferrat

5) Sog nit keynmol - Hirsch Glick/Daniel & Dimitri Pokrass

As with my other projects, students learn aspects of the Holocaust that they usually are unfamiliar with: the poverty of most Polish Jews before the Holocaust; the fate of Sephardi Jews (from Macedonia, Bulgaria, Greece, North Africa) and their use of Ladino; Jewish resistance; the role of Vichy France in the deportation and murder of Jews from France, etc.