Mordechai Gebirtig

Mordechai Gebirtig (Yiddish: מרדכי געבירטיג), born Mordecai Bertig (4 May 1877 – 4 June 1942), was an influential Polish Jewish poet and songwriter of the interwar period.

[1] A number of his Yiddish songs are sung to this day, including Es brent, Reyzele, Moyshele Mayn Fraynd, and Kinder Yorn.

His life ended in the Nazi shooting action carried out in the Kraków Ghetto on the infamous "Bloody Thursday" of June 4, 1942.

It was in such an environment that Gebirtig developed, encouraged by such professional writers and Yiddishist cultural activists as Avrom Reyzen, who for a time lived and published a journal in Krakow.

Gebirtig's talent was his own, but he took the language, themes, types, tone, and timbre of his pieces from his surroundings, in some measure continuing the musical tradition of the popular Galician cabaret entertainers known as the Broder singers, who in turn were beholden to the yet older and still vital tradition of the badchen's (wedding jester's) improvisatory art.

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!"

Nisht gehert khadoshim lang in fabrik dem hamer klang, s'lign keylim kalt fargesn, s'nemt der zhaver zey shoyn fresn.