Mordechai Gebirtig

The Ghetto Memory Trail, the intersection of Dąbrówki and Janowa Wola streets. Here in 1942 the Germans murdered Abraham Neumann and Mordechai Gebirtig. Mordechai Gebirtig , born Mordecai Bertig (4 May 1877 – 4 June 1942), was an influential Polish Jewish poet and songwriter of the interwar period. He was shot by Germans in the Kraków Ghetto, occupied Poland, during the Holocaust. Gebirtig became a renowned folk artist in Yiddish literature and song while in Kraków. He was self-taught in music, played the shepherd's pipe, and tapped out tunes on the piano with one finger. "Undzer shtetl brennt" was sung in the Nazi ghettos of German-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.

Arbetsloze marsh

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

Publications and recordings . Edition Künstlertreff, Wuppertal – (gramophone record and booklet) . Edition Künstlertreff, Wuppertal – . Edition Künstlertreff, Wuppertal – . Studio Hard, Warschau (CD) 1946: . Krakau 1946 1949: . Farl. Dawke, Paris 1949 1992: . Wuppertal 1992. – 1997: . Lerner, Tel Aviv 1997 2005: . Anthony Coleman, piano. Tzadik, 2005