sometimes in april, sometimes in may
- Leopold Staff
Lest we forget man's inhumanity to man, today is Yom Ha'Shoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day):
“Never Say” by Hersh Glik
Never say there is only death for you.
Leaden skies may be concealing days of blue -
Because the hour we have hungered for is near;
Beneath our tread the earth shall tremble: We are here!
From land of palm-tree to the far-off land of snow,
We shall be coming with our torment and our woe.
And everywhere our blood has sunk into the earth,
Shall our bravery, our vigor blossom forth!
We’ll have the morning sun to set our day aglow,
And all our yesterdays shall vanish with the foe,
And if the time is long before the sun appears,
Then let this song go like a signal through the years.
This song was written with our blood and not with lead;
It’s not a song that birds sing overhead,
It was a people, among toppling barricades,
That sang this song of ours with pistols and grenades.
So never say that there is only death for you.
Leaden skies may be concealing days of blue -
Because the hour we have hungered for is near;
Beneath our tread the earth shall tremble: We are here!
Never Say became the unofficial song of Jewish partisans across occupied Europe. It was written in 1943 by Hersh Glik (1922-44) and set to music by two Soviet-Jewish composers, the brothers Dimitri and Daniel Pokras. Hersh Glik was killed after he tried to escape from a concentration camp in Estonia.
_______________
Blacks in Nazi Germany
_______________
The “last will” of David Graber, a 19-year-old member of the Warsaw ghetto resistance, found after the war
I would love to see the moment in which the great treasure will be dug up and shriek to the world proclaiming the truth. So the world may know all. So the ones who did not live through it may be glad, and we may feel like veterans with medals on our chests. We would be the fathers, the teachers and educators of the future. We would be the grandfathers of the bards who tell to the grandsons, to the young the story of victories and defeats, of keeping alive and of perishing. How they would cock the ears! But no, we shall certainly never live to see it, and therefore do I write my last will. May the treasure fall in good hands, may it last into better times, may it alarm and alert the world to what happened and was played out in the twentieth century.
We may now die in peace. We fulfilled our mission. May history attest to us.
_______________
Sometimes in April, a film about the Rwandan genocide
Whether it was sterilization campaigns against indigenous peoples in the Americas or the Armenian Genocide, the ethnic cleansing of Muslim Bosnians or the Middle Passage, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia or what's happening now in Darfur, we should be ever-vigilant and remember that no one group has the monopoly on hate. That is the meaning of NEVER AGAIN!
Lest we forget man's inhumanity to man, today is Yom Ha'Shoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day):
“Never Say” by Hersh Glik
Never say there is only death for you.
Leaden skies may be concealing days of blue -
Because the hour we have hungered for is near;
Beneath our tread the earth shall tremble: We are here!
From land of palm-tree to the far-off land of snow,
We shall be coming with our torment and our woe.
And everywhere our blood has sunk into the earth,
Shall our bravery, our vigor blossom forth!
We’ll have the morning sun to set our day aglow,
And all our yesterdays shall vanish with the foe,
And if the time is long before the sun appears,
Then let this song go like a signal through the years.
This song was written with our blood and not with lead;
It’s not a song that birds sing overhead,
It was a people, among toppling barricades,
That sang this song of ours with pistols and grenades.
So never say that there is only death for you.
Leaden skies may be concealing days of blue -
Because the hour we have hungered for is near;
Beneath our tread the earth shall tremble: We are here!
Never Say became the unofficial song of Jewish partisans across occupied Europe. It was written in 1943 by Hersh Glik (1922-44) and set to music by two Soviet-Jewish composers, the brothers Dimitri and Daniel Pokras. Hersh Glik was killed after he tried to escape from a concentration camp in Estonia.
_______________
Blacks in Nazi Germany
_______________
The “last will” of David Graber, a 19-year-old member of the Warsaw ghetto resistance, found after the war
I would love to see the moment in which the great treasure will be dug up and shriek to the world proclaiming the truth. So the world may know all. So the ones who did not live through it may be glad, and we may feel like veterans with medals on our chests. We would be the fathers, the teachers and educators of the future. We would be the grandfathers of the bards who tell to the grandsons, to the young the story of victories and defeats, of keeping alive and of perishing. How they would cock the ears! But no, we shall certainly never live to see it, and therefore do I write my last will. May the treasure fall in good hands, may it last into better times, may it alarm and alert the world to what happened and was played out in the twentieth century.
We may now die in peace. We fulfilled our mission. May history attest to us.
_______________
Sometimes in April, a film about the Rwandan genocide
Whether it was sterilization campaigns against indigenous peoples in the Americas or the Armenian Genocide, the ethnic cleansing of Muslim Bosnians or the Middle Passage, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia or what's happening now in Darfur, we should be ever-vigilant and remember that no one group has the monopoly on hate. That is the meaning of NEVER AGAIN!