Exclusively for our website, the Workers’ Circle shared with us a recording of the popular Soviet song To see so great a snowfall written by Lydia Kozlova and performed by the famous singer Psoy Korolenko. It was translated into Yiddish by Yoel Matveyev who also prepared an English translation, the text of which is available on YouTube.
The film’s director, Ukrainian artist Dana Kavelina, lived for a long time in Lviv. Currently she lives in Germany. The fantastic machine shown in her production enables us to hear voices from the past and from the afterlife, see strange and horrific scenes telling about war and revolution, utopia, repentance and the final fate of the Universe.
Yoel Matveyev, a St. Petersburg-based writer and poet, spoke about the history of women’s poetry in Yiddish and the difficulties of its adequate translation. He also briefly outlined the history of early verse in this language, starting with a short anonymous 13th century poem. The Moscow linguist Lyubov Lavrova introduced various examples of handwritten correspondence in Yiddish from WWII, explaining the difficulties of translating it due to unclear handwriting, different dialects and borrowings from different languages.
On January 18, 2024, the official opening of the 10th annual all-Russian Holocaust Commemoration Week took place at the Moscow Nikitsky Gate Theater. The event coincided with the 100th birthday anniversary of Ivan Martynushkin, a Soviet WWII veteran who was among the liberators of the Auschwitz death camp; he was the most honored guest of the opening event.
The Holocaust Commemoration Week is linked to the International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27). The events, held under the leadership of the Russian Jewish Congress, are to be continued in all regions of Russia until January 31. Our project’s creator Dr. Mark Zilberquit, the founder of the Heritage Projects Foundation (USA) and Yiddish Heritage Preservation Foundation (Israel), is also participating in these commemorative events.
At the opening evening, guests’ talks alternated with a musical and dramatic performance staged by the theater’s artistic director Mark Rozovsky, which included a medley of Yiddish songs performed by Tatyana Revzina, the musical director of the same theater. We are glad to present her performance posted on Youtube specially for our project. See also below our exclusive pictures of the commemorative events.
We are happy to offer our site’s readers a unique treasure, which all lovers and students of Yiddish will appreciate: the archive of the quarterly magazine Yidishland. This is the only literary magazine in today’s world published entirely in Yiddish in the traditional paper form. On our website you can also read about the history of Yidishland, which recently celebrated its 5th anniversary.
Our team expresses gratitude to the founders of this wonderful periodical, Velvl Chernin and Mikhoel Felsenbaum, for their decision to make available all issues of Yidishland, expect for the most recent ones published during the last year, exclusively on our website for interactive reading and downloading. There is also an option to link individual pages of the magazine on social networks. In Yidishland you will find real marvels of both historical and modern literature written in Yiddish.