Mordechai Gebirtig

Mordechai Gebirtig, born Mordecai Bertig (Yiddish: מרדכי געבירטיג‎, b. 4 May 1877, Kraków, Austria Hungary; d. 4 June 1942, Kraków Ghetto, General Government) was an influential Yiddish poet and songwriter.

One of Gebirtig's best-known songs is "S'brent" (It is Burning), written in 1938 in response to the 1936 pogrom of Jews in the shtetl (small town) of Przytyk. Gebirtig had hoped its message, “Don't stand there, brothers, douse the fire!” would be a call to action. Cracow's underground Jewish resistance adopted S'brent as its anthem.Undzer shtetl brennt was sung in the ghettos of Nazi-occupied Europe. Since then the song, in the original Yiddish and in its Hebrew translation titled "Ha-Ayyarah Bo'eret" (העיירה בוערת, "Our Little Town is Burning!" - hence the occasional reference to a Yiddish title, "Undzer Shtetl Brent!"), continues to be widely performed in the context of Holocaust commemoration.

One of Gebirtig's political songs that is also still popular today is the Arbetloze marsh, or Song of the Unemployed:

Eynts, tsvey, dray, fir, arbetsloze zenen mir.
Nisht gehert khadoshim lang
in fabrik den hamer klang,
s'lign keylim kalt fargesn,
s'nemt der zhaver zey shoyn fresn.
Geyen mir arum in gas,
vi di gvirim pust un pas.

One, two, three, four, we are unemployed.
We have not heard all month long,
in the factory the hammer sound.
Tools are cold, forgotten,
the rust will eat them.
Let's go around on the streets,
and spend our time without work like the idle rich.

Mordecai Gebirtig (1877–1942) was born in Krakow and lived in its Jewish working-class quarter all his life, one which was ended by a Nazi bullet in the Kraków Ghetto on the infamous "Bloody Thursday" of June 4, 1942. He is the preeminent "folk" artist in Yiddish literature and song. Gebirtig served for five years in the Austro-Hungarian army. He was self-taught in music, played the shepherd's pipe well, and tapped out tunes on the piano with one finger. He earned his livelihood as a furniture worker; music and theater were avocations.

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