MORTKHE GEBIRTIG

MORTKHE GEBIRTIG (May 4, 1877-June 4, 1942)

            His actual family name was Bertig.  He was born in Cracow, on Jósefa Street in the Kazimierz quarter, into a home of poor retailers.  Until age ten he attended religious primary school, then he left to apprentice with a carpenter, later becoming a carpenter in his own right.  From his youth he displayed great interest in music, poetry, and theater.  He played a shepherd’s fife quite well and was also a gifted actor.  Early in 1906 he joined an amateur Jewish troupe in Cracow.  He particularly excelled in the role of Zakhel in the play Geto (Ghetto) by H. Hayerman (“there was in him a spark of [Rudolf] Schildkraut,” wrote Avrom Reyzen in his Epizodn fun mayn lebn [Episodes from my life] concerning Gebirtig as an actor at that time).  In 1905-1906, apparently under the influence of Reyzen’s literary activities at the time in Cracow, Gebirtig began to write.  At that time he belonged to the Jewish Social Democratic Party (P. Żydowska Partia Socjal-Demokratyczna) of Galicia, and his first written efforts were published in Sotsyal demokrat (Social democrat) in Cracow, organ of the party.  In issue no. 10 (December 8, 1905) of the newspaper, he published under the name “M. Gebirtig” a poem (effectively his first published poem), “Der general-shtrayk” (The general strike): “It seems to me to be a dream, / Seemingly an image all its own / Of a world with kind spirits, / Free men—proud and gentle.”  One did not hear from Gebirtig after this for some years.  Around the time of WWI, he served for five years in the Austro-Hungarian army.  At that time there were people among the Jews in Galicia who had taken to singing popular songs; Gebirtig wrote them down, matched and adapted them to melodies, and in 1920 at “Dos bikhl” (The booklet) publishing house of S. Monderer in Cracow, he published his first small collection of songs, entitled Folkstimlekh lider (Popular songs), 32 pp., pocketbook format.  This collection included twenty songs, two of which—“Kleyner yosem” (Little orphan) and “A malekh vert geboyrn” (An angel is born)—were included in adapted form in Gebirtig’s subsequent collection of songs.  His small booklet also contained, among others: the oft sung children’s songs “Hershele” (Hershele) and “Viglid” (Lullaby); the popular song “Unter geyt di velt” (The worlds sinks); the song “Slikhes” (Penitential prayers), an ethnic satire of God who “only hears his holy little Jews.”  Already in this first collection can one see the extraordinarily simple, characteristic folk quality that would later make this poet so beloved among Jewish communities in Europe and the United States.  In the 1920s and early 1930s, he wrote a great deal and his fame spread.  First, Boaz Yungvits-Young included in his adaptation of Moyshe Sharf’s operetta Di rumenishe khasene (The Romanian wedding) Gebirtig’s poems “Kinder-yorn” (Childhood years) and “Hulyet, hulyet kinderlekh” (Revel, revel little children), and they traveled about the world with the operetta.  Later, Molly Picon, with her own distinctive interpretation, made Gebirtig’s songs popular among theater audiences.  Then came the theatrical artists, such as: Khayele Grober, Yosele Kolodny, and others who brought Gebirtig’s heartfelt tunes around the world.  In the Yiddish variety theaters in Warsaw, Lodz, and Vilna—Ararat, Azazel, Di Yidishe Bande, Sambatyen, and Maidim—they continually sang and staged Gebirtig’s songs.  The Jewish Theatrical Society of Cracow frequently presented Gebirtig evenings.  Two Jewish composers in Cracow—Gebirtig’s friends, Borekh Shperber and Jan Hoffman—helped him adapt music and words and to create original music for his poems.  At his thirtieth anniversary as a writer in 1936, a Gebirtig Committee in Cracow brought the poet a gift: his second song collection, entitled Mayne lider (My songs), over fifty songs with notation, 109 pp., printed by D. Kreynes in Vilna in 1000 copies—150 of which appeared in a luxury edition with a foreword by M. Kipnis entitled “Mortkhe gebirtig (bertig) der folks-dikhter un folks-zinger” (Mortkhe Gebirtig [Bertig], the folk poet and folk singer).  In 1942 this collection was republished by the Workmen’s Circle in New York with a short preface by N. Khanin.  The latter collection included the widely known “Mamele” (Mama), “Reyzele” (Little Reyze), “Moyshele” (Little Moyshe), and “Kivele,” Gebirtig’s lullabies and songs of children’s pranks, love songs and life elegies.

            In 1938, after the pogrom against the Jews in the city of Pshitik (Przytyk), Poland, Gebirtig composed his song “Undzer shtetl brent” (Our town is burning): “It’s burning, my brothers, it’s on fire! / Oh, the moment may, God forbid, arrive: / Our city, together with us, / May burn to ashes. / What will remain after the fight, / Will only be hollow, black walls!”  This song went far beyond the borders of Pshitik and prophetically anticipated the coming catastrophe.  The song went completely unnoticed in 1938, but in 1942, already at this point in the Cracow ghetto, it became the banner song of the youth who quarreled among themselves over the melody—“Don’t stand there, brothers, for no reason / With your arms folded…. / If this town is dear to you, / Grab the gear and put out the fire, / Extinguish it with your own blood, / Show them that you can.”  With the outbreak of war in 1939 and 1940, Gebirtig and his wife Blumke, and their two daughters Bashke and Lyolya (the third daughter Shifre was in Lemberg, separated from the family), were still stuck in his carpenter’s workshop, and—as was always his practice—he sang for himself and for his family.  At that time, one heard his songs: “Erev yonkiper” (The night before Yom Kippur), “Shifreles portret” (Shifre’s portrait), “S’tut vey” (It hurts), “Minutn fun bitokhn” (Minutes of confidence), and “Blayb gezunt mir, kroke!” (Stay well, Cracow!).  The last of these he expressed in song in October 1940 when he and his family were deported to Łagiewniki, a village near Cracow, where he remained until spring 1942.  Six songs of his from this period have reached us, the last of which was “A tog fun nekome” (A day of revenge): “And I say to you, brothers, remember what I say! / The only consolation and solace, — / it’ll come, you hear me? / There’ll come a day, / When we shall take revenge!”  In April 1942, Gebirtig and his family were transferred to the Cracow ghetto, where he found he close friends, the composer Jan Hoffman and his family and the painter Avrom Nayman who painted a portrait of the poet in the ghetto.  Gebirtig continued writing in the ghetto.  Only four of his poems from those months have reached us.  The last of them (May 1942) was the sarcastic poem, “S’iz gut…” (It’s good…).  His life was cut short on “bloody Thursday” (June 4, 1942), when the Nazis encircled Janowa Wola Street in the ghetto and began forcing the Jews onto boxcars which were waiting to take them to the death camp at Bełżec.  During this deportation, the murderers shot the marching Jews from behind.  The first to fall was Avrom Nayman, and a later bullet killed Mortkhe Gebirtig.

            From the songs that Gebirtig composed in the Nazi years, a number were saved by Jan Hoffman’s daughter (who stayed close to Gebirtig’s daughters after his death and was the only survivor), perhaps as many as twenty.  Fifteen of them, together with the song “Our Town is Burning,” were published (edited by Mikhl Borvits, Nela Rost, and Yoysef Volf) by the Central Jewish Historical Commission in Poland in book form, entitled S’brent (It’s burning) in Cracow (1946), 48 pp., with a preface by Yoysef Volf.  Meylekh Felin (M. Bakaltshuk), who received—as he claimed—the songs for a short time from Hoffman’s daughter, wrote of another song which not included in the last collection.  It is called “Minutn fun yiesh” (Moments of despair), and he published it in the monthly magazine Dorem-afrike (South Africa) in Johannesburg (September 1952).  B. Mark—in his volume Umgekumene shrayber fun di getos un lagern (Murdered writers from the ghettos and camps) (Warsaw, 1954)—mentions also a two-stanza poem, “A din-toyre mit got, vos farhit di rotskhim fun aldos beyz” (A rabbinical court with God who prevents the murderers from everything evil), which appears to belong to Gebirtig’s literary inheritance.  We should note that the contents of this poem are similar to the content of “Minutn fun yiesh.”  Perhaps they were variants of the same poem.  It appears, in any event, that he wrote a great deal more in the Nazi period than what we now have before us.  In 1948 the publishing house associated with the Workmen’s Circle in New York brought a third edition of Mayne lider, 120 pp., in a large format, with notation that also includes all the earlier editions of his songs.  In order they go as follows: Mayne lider, Folkstimlekh lider, and S’brent, with a new, longer “foreword to the third edition” by N. Khanin.  In 1954 the publishing house of Avigdor Shpritser in Buenos Aires brought out Gebirtig’s Geklibene lider (Collected songs), twenty-nine songs with notation, 88 pp., with a foreword by M. Kipnis to the first edition of Mayne lider of 1936, and with a new foreword by Yisroel Ashendorf entitled “Un s’iz geven a yid a posheter…” (And there was a simple Jew…).  Also: Mortkhe gebirtig singt (Mortkhe Gebirtig sings) (Buenos Aires: IKUF, 1963), 133, 42 pp.  People nowadays have dubbed Gebirtig the great “Jewish folk troubadour,” the “singer of the murdered Jewish masses in Poland,” the “last of the Broder singers,” and the like.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 1; Reyzen, in Yoyvl-bukh keneder odler (Jubilee volume for Keneder odler) (Montreal, 1938); Z. Zilbertsvayg, Leksikon fun yidishn teater (Handbook of the Yiddish theater), vol.1; Avrom Reyzen, Epizodn fun mayn lebn, part 3 (Vilna, 1935), pp. 22-24, 302-3; Nay-velt (Tel Aviv) 32 (1947); Y. Paner, in Tshernovitser bleter (June 24, 1936); Y. Pat, Ash un fayer (Ash and fire) (New York, 1946), pp. 191-94; Kidesh hashem (Sanctification of the name [martyrs]), ed. Shmuel Niger (New York, 1946), pp. 336-39 (following Yoysef Volf, “Dikhter-martirer” [Poet martyrs], Morgn-zhurnal [New York], December 9, 1945); M. Ravitsh, in Keneder odler (Montreal) (December 23, 1946); Kh. Sh. Kazdan, in Yugnt-veker (Warsaw) 7-8 (1947); L. Finkelshteyn, Pidyen-hashem (Redemption of the Lord) (Toronto, 1948); B. Heler, Antologye fun umgekumene dikhter (Anthology of murdered poets) (Warsaw, 1951); Meylekh Felin, in Dorem-afrike (Johannesburg) (September 1952); N. Mayzil, Yidishe temes un yidishe melodyes bay bavustike muziker (Jewish themes and Jewish melodies of well-known musicians) (New York, 1952), pp. 75-76; B. Mark, Umgekumene shrayber fun di getos un lagern (Warsaw, 1954), pp. 187-92; Sefer milḥamot hagetaot (The fighting ghettos) (Tel Aviv, 1954), p. 113; Shimshon Meltser, Al naharot (To the rivers) (Jerusalem, 1955), p. 429; Dr. M. Naygreshl, in Fun noentn over, vol. 1 (New York, 1955), pp. 349-51; Y. H. Levi, in Di yidishe shtime (London) (May 24, 1957).

Yitskhok Kharlash

[Additional information from: Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 163.]