JewishSong.org
Yisrolik, the boy who would not be pitied
Yisrolik was written for the theatre of the Vilna ghetto in early 1942. The words are by the poet Leyb Rozental, the music by Misha Veksler, the composer and conductor of the ghetto theatre orchestra. The song was performed in the ghetto by Rozental's own sister, the singer Khayele Rozental. Sources differ on the precise premiere date; the family memorial places the first concert in January 1942, while World ORT gives February.
The song is sung in the voice of a boy who sells cigarettes and saccharin on a street corner of the ghetto. His trousers are sackcloth, his coat has a hole, he owns galoshes but no shoes. In the words of the archive, he greets his harsh fate with an optimistic whistle and a song. He states plainly that he is not crying, because once you start you are lost. The song is not about suffering. It is about a child holding on to his own dignity.
Leyb Rozental (1916-1945) published his first book of poems at the age of fourteen and became the most performed writer of the ghetto stage. When the Vilna ghetto was liquidated in 1943 he was deported to the Klooga camp in Estonia, and he died in January 1945. Misha Veksler (born 1907) did not survive either. Khayele Rozental (1924-1979) lived through the war, and the song she introduced outlived everyone who made it.
Today Yisrolik is kept in the Music of the Holocaust collection of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and in the World ORT archive, and it is sung at memorial concerts and in school programs around the world.
The Russian version on this page is a poetic adaptation by the poet Olga Anikina, made in 2017, performed by Elechka. It is not a word for word translation of the Yiddish. It carries the boy, his pride and his humor into a language that millions of people read, so that the song can be understood and not only heard.
Why bring it into English
A song that was written so a child could be heard should not stay locked inside one language. Bringing Yisrolik into Russian, and then line by line into English, lets a listener anywhere follow exactly what the boy says about himself. That is the whole purpose of Jewish Songs. For All: the melody travels easily, the meaning needs help.
The words, line by line
Russian adaptation by Olga Anikina, 2017. The English beside it is a literal, line by line rendering for understanding only. It is not a singing version, so please do not perform it. The refrain returns after every verse; it is printed here once, in place.
For parents and educators
Recommended age: eight and up. Younger children can listen to the melody with a grown up nearby, but the story behind it is for a child who already knows, in simple terms, that there was a war.
Before you listen, say who is singing: a boy of about ten or eleven who lives in a closed part of a city called a ghetto, and who sells small things on the street so his family has something to eat. That is enough setting. The song does the rest.
After you listen, ask what the boy says he owns and what he says he can do. He owns almost nothing and he can sing and whistle. Ask why he insists he is not crying. Children usually recognize that feeling right away, and it opens a good conversation about the difference between pity and respect.
What to avoid: do not fill in the ending, do not show camp photographs, and do not turn the song into a history lesson about numbers. If a child asks what happened to the boy, it is honest and enough to say that many children like him did not survive, that the people who wrote the song did not survive either, and that we sing it so they are remembered.