This collection is part of the collections compiled by the Central Historical Commission (CHC) of the Central Committee of Liberated Jews in the US Zone in Munich (M.1). The CHC collected much material from the Holocaust survivors, including testimonies, documentary material in their possession and more. When the CHC was disbanded, the CHC archive was transferred to Yad Vashem.
JL according to the RG description in the YV system
USHMM
YV archives
Description of the files are available on IDEA ALM system at Yad Vashem Archives reading room and on the Yad Vashem website
368 Files
There are 353 poems/songs in the collection, mostly in Yiddish. Most of the poems/songs were written by inmates of the camps and ghettos during the war, and some after the end of the war. The poems/songs express the suffering and torture, the life under subhuman conditions and the murder of the Jews; they also tell of the burning of synagogues and desecration of holy books and religious articles. Despite the despair permeating the poems/songs, there is also a spark of hope, a ray of light at the end of the tunnel and the yearning for victory and revenge against the Germans as well as the expectation of reaching Eretz Israel, the State of the Jews to be established after the liberation. Approximately 35 of the songs in the collection were recorded; they appear as recordings and are catalogued in the Sapir system.
Documentation on Jewish folklore during the Second World War