A poem by Esther Kolner:
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| Bottom: The Young Children of Wysokie Litewskie |
A free translation:
The Young Children of Wysokie Litewskie
I have stolen a page
To write down about the situation in our small shtetl.
There is no work, nor factories
We grow up just to suffocate,
We don't have stores nor merchandise,
We live in fear and horror
We need clothes and food,
Many of us stay single.
There is no value to Yikhes, or to beauty,
To reach a Shidekh is difficult.
You speak of dollars – this is now everything
You get wind of a possible match, That's where the shmalz is.
The world has changed, there is no more board offering to a future son in law
If you have dollars that is the best,
We talk to heaven our bodies bent to the earth
We want to study but we are put-off-limit/prohibited …
We have lost our youth. We have no plan anymore
Our only hope is Biro bidzjhan…
Esther Kolner (daughter of Zavel)
| Notes: Yikhes: Family prestige. Shidekh: marital match. Shmalz: fat, used for flavoring. Biro bidzjhan: Esther wrote it in two words, the names of two rivers in the Russian Far East, but she was almost certainly referring to the town of Birobidzhan in that region, which in the 1930's had been developed and promoted as a new, safe home for widely-oppressed Jews of Russia. |
