JewishSong.org
Summer Day, a mother singing while the world ends outside
This song is not a translation, and it is important to say so first. The Russian text is an original work by the poet Olga Anikina, written in 2017. It was written in dialogue with a historical song, and it answers that song rather than carrying it across.
The song it answers is S'iz geven a zumertog, It Was a Summer Day. According to the World ORT archive Music and the Holocaust, it was written by Rikle Glezer, an eighteen year old prisoner of the Vilna ghetto, to the tune widely known as Papirosn. Glezer's song chronicles in painful detail how Jews were driven into the ghetto, their pleas for help, and the killings on the way there and in the nearby forest of Ponar.
The historical song uses the melody associated with Papirosn. The precise origin and earliest publication of that melody are not established by the sources cited here. The recording on this page uses Olga Anikina’s original Russian poem; it does not sing the Yiddish words of Papirosn.
Olga Anikina's Russian text takes the same melody and the same summer day, and puts a mother and a small child in the middle of it. She is singing him to sleep. She tells him that the thunder is far away, beyond the river, and that here everything is quiet. Every listener can hear that this is not true, and that she knows it is not true, and that she is saying it anyway, because it is the only thing left to give him.
What the song leaves out is what makes it bearable. Nothing is described. There is a scream, the earth, the faces of strangers, and then at once the mother's voice again: it is only a dream, as long as it is being dreamt. The last verse is a promise to sail away in a light blue boat.
The recording is sung by Elechka. Because the Russian is an original poem rather than an adaptation, this page presents it as its own work, and points to Glezer's song as the historical source it stands beside.
Why bring it into English
The English prose rendering makes the mother’s words accessible to readers who do not know Russian. It is an aid to understanding this recording, not an English singing version.
The words, line by line
Original Russian poem by Olga Anikina, 2017, not a translation. 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.
For parents and educators
This lullaby places a mother and child beside danger and loss. Its quiet musical form does not remove those subjects; consider the actual words and the listener’s familiarity with the history.
Before you listen, you can say very little: a mother is putting her child to bed on a hot summer day, and there is something dangerous happening far away that she does not want him to see. If you are listening with a young child, that sentence is enough on its own.
After you listen, ask what the mother tells her son and whether he believes her. Ask why she says the thunder is beyond the river. Older listeners will notice the yellow seal in the second verse and can be told plainly that Jews were made to wear a yellow mark so they could be picked out. Ask what the light blue boat at the end is for. There is no single right answer, and the question is the point.
What to avoid: do not explain what the scream is, do not name Ponar to a young child, and do not correct the mother. She is not lying to her son, she is protecting him, and children understand that distinction better than adults expect.