Shmerke Kaczerginski (1908-1954), Yiddish writer and cultural activist, born in Vilna, Lithuania. orphaned at age six and raised by his grandfather, Kaczerginski learned the lithographer's trade. As a youth, he was involved with outlawed Communist groups and was arrested several times, serving a lengthy prison term. In the 1930s, two of his revolutionary poems became popular in Poland. He wrote short stories with a radical bent and was a correspondent and reporter for literary publications, including the semilegal leftist press in Poland and the New York Communist daily Morgn-frayhayt. During the first period of Nazi occupation, Kaczerginski wandered through villages and towns posing as a deaf mute; after many difficulties, he ended up in the Vilna ghetto. Kaczerginski was a member of the Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye (United Partisans Organization; FPO). In September 1943, Kaczerginski, along with Avrom and Freydke Sutzkever and other members of the FPO, escaped from the Vilna ghetto as part of an organized group of fighters just before its liquidation. They joined a Soviet partisan unit in the Naroch Forests, where Kaczerginski fought as a partisan until liberation in July 1944. Kaczerginski’s books describe the destruction of Vilna, the partisan struggle, and his own experiences during the Holocaust period: Khurbn Vilne (The Destruction of Vilna; 1947), Partizaner geyen (Partisans on the Move; 1947), and Ikh bin geven a partizan (I Was a Partisan; 1952). Refer to extended biography here: http://yleksikon.blogspot.com/2019/02/shmarye-shmerke-katsherginski-szmerke.html
Strange and wonderful is the picture before me: I see heroes made hard as oaks by life in the forest, strong men who wouldn't blink an eye when the time came to kill, slaughter, destroy. And here in the twilight, they turn sentimental as women, and pour their feelings of love and longing into songs they created themselves or had refashioned from pre-war tunes. Vanya sang more passionately than the rest-although many had finer voices. From him, I learned a song that I now sing all the time. I even translated it, with slight changes, into Yiddish. Now our other comrades sing it constantly, too. - Shmerke Kaczerginski, I Was a Partisan"Vanya's song" originally about Soviet partisans, eventually found its way to Palestine where it was popularized as Be-arvot HaNegev (On the Plains of the Negev) during Israel's 1948 War of Independence.
Performed by Theodore Bikel with Daniel Kempin, guitar
Dort baym breg fun veldl At the Edge of a Forest