Way back in 2018 I wrote about a CD called Yiddish Glory: The Lost Songs of WW2 (though I don’t think I wrote an actual review of the CD… I should fix that).  Since then various participants in that project including UoT’s Professor Anna Shternshis plus the members of Payadora Tango Ensemble and Likht Ensemble among others have unearthed more lost songs from the ghettoes, labour camps, DP camps and so on.  I’ve written about some of it and some of it features on Payadora’s Silent Tears CD.  Other songs were released on the Yiddish Glory Youtube channel during COVID.

Now there’s even more thanks to Professor Anna Shternshis’ ongonig research and there’s a new CD ; Yiddish Glory:: The Silenced Songs of WW2 from the same archive (for the most part) as the earlier album and performed by mainly the same folks.  It’s rather different though.  While the first album was mainly about resistance and while often pretty grim was essentially hopeful, this one is songs from survivors of the camps and ghettoes and it’s, unsurprisingly, rather more depressing, though not without typically dark Yiddish humour in places.

Musically it’s quite varied.  Some tracks get the full on klezmer treatment but most of it is not so upbeat.  There are arrangements of folk tunes and a few pieces have very sparse (mainly) piano accompaniment.

It’s very well done.  It’s an immensely impressive line up of musicians and the singing and playing is impeccable.  It’s very well recorded too and the documentation is incredibly detailed with the provenance of each song as well as texts in Yiddish and English.  It’s a digital release on Six Degrees Records available as MP3 or excellent lossless 44.1kHz/24 bit quality in the usual formats.

If one is interested in this music this is a “must have”.  Appropriately it’s being released on Friday April 10th; Holocaust Remembrance Day.