Created by J. Yalovitser
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                                                                                      Friling-Springtime  
                                                                     L yrics Shmerke Kaczerginski (1908-1954 Poet Partisan of Vilna)
                                                                                             Music Abrom Brudno (Died in the Holocaust 1943) 
                                                                                             Singer Chava Alberstein (Israel)

                                                                                     
                                                                                               
    

Picture
    This moving song memorializes the author's wife. In April 1943, she perished in the Vilno ghetto in April 1943. In September 1943, Kaczerginski joined the partisan forces following the liquidation of the Vilno ghetto. After  the war he compiled several hundred poems as well as song lyrics. He survived the war only to succumb to his death in a plane crash . This occured in 1954. The music is composed by Abraham Brudno in April 1943 in Vilno ghetto(Luthvania).  Following the liquidation of  the Ghetto in September 1943 was deported to a concentration camp in Estonia, where he was executed by the Nazi SS (Schutzstaffel).
     In the Holocaust of World War II, The Vilna Ghetto was a Jewish ghetto established by Nazi Germany, in the city of Vilnius. It was in the occupied Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic . In its two years of duration, starvation, disease, street executions, maltreatment and deportations in concentration camps and extermination camps reduced the population of the ghetto from an estimated  40,000 people to zero. Only several hundred people managed to survive. They found refuge in the forests or joined the Soviet partisans, or found shelter among sympathetic  locals.

Yiddish
Ikh blondzhe in geto
Fun gesl tsu gesl
Un ken nit gefinen keyn ort
Nito iz mayn liber,
Vi trogt men ariber?

Mentshn, o zogt khotsh a vort.
Es laykht oyf mayn heym itst
Der  himl der bloyer 
Vos zhe hob ikh itst derfun?

Ikh shtey vi a betler Bay
yetvidn toyre 
Un betl a bisele zun. 

  Chorus
Friling, nem tsu mayn troyer
Un breng mayn libstn
Maynt trayen tsurik
Friling oyf dayne fligl bloye
O, nem  mayn harts mit
Un gib es op mayn glik.


 Ikh gey tsu der arbet
Farbay undzer shtibl
In troyer, der toyer farmakht.
Der tog a tsehelter
Di blumen farvelkte, 
Zey  vanynen, far zey iz oykn nakht.

Far nakht oyf tsurikvegs, 
Es noyet der  troyer,
Ot do hostu libster gevart.
Ot do inem  shotn
Nokh kentik dayn trot iz,
Flegt kushn mikh liblekh un tsart 
 
  Chorus
 S'iz hay-yor der friling
Gor fri  ongekumen,
Tseblit hot zikh benkshaft nokh dir,
Ikh ze dikh vi itster 
Balodn mit blumen, 
A freydiker geystu tsu mir.

Di zun hot fargosn Dem
gortn mist  shtraln,
Tseshprotst hot di erd zikh in grin
Mayn  trayer, mayn libster, 
Vu bistu farfaln?
Du geyst nit aroys fun mayn
zin.

English  
I walk through the Ghetto alone and forsaken,
There's no-one to care for me now.
And how can you live
when your love has been  taken,
Will somebody please show me how?
I know that it's springtime,

and birdsong, and sunshine,
All nature seems happy and free,
But locked in the Ghetto
I stand like a beggar, I beg for
some sunshine for  me.
 
Refrain
Springtime, what good is springtime,
What  good is  sunshine,
when he is away?
Springtime, you shine upon my
sorrow, but still tomorrow
Is as bleak as today. 

The house that we lived in
is now barricaded, 
The  windows are broken and bare.
The sun is so fierce that the
flowers have  faded,
They wilt in the wintery air.
Each morning,  each evening
I  have to walk past it,
Hiding my eyes from the sight

The place where you loved me
the place where you kissed me,
The  place where you held me so tight. 

  (Refrain) 

  How thoughtful,
how kind of the heavenly powers 
To send spring so early this year.
Why thank you for coming,
I see  you  brought flowers
You want me to welcome you here?
They say that  the  Ghetto
is golden and glowing
But sunlight and tears make me blind. 

You see, my beloved,
how soon they start flowing
I  can't get you out  of my mind.


 (Refrain)