Customer Reviews

Songs of Wwii Jewish Resistance

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This is a wonderful CD, but I'd advise you not to buy it. I learned the hard way when I took the "Partisans of Vilna" DVD out from the library - the DVD includes the CD, plus a songbook that has full Yiddish and English lyrics. The DVD costs only ten dollars more, and it's well worth it.
I wish Amazon had explained this more clearly, instead of offering the CD at a package price with the DVD. If you do that you get TWO copies of the same CD.
But do buy the DVD - and get the CD for free.
-Joe Offer-

This CD is a very beautiful, stirring collection of music written during WWII. The Jews in the Ghetto of Vilna organized a musical, cultural society to keep some resemblence of society under terrible circumstances. Music was used as a form of resistance and a way to rally courage. The music is in Yiddish and comes with an insert explaining the songs and poetry as well as English translation.

This disc brings together a collection of songs that represent a break in Jewish history. For nearly 2000 years, Jews yearned to live peaceful lives immersed in family life, prayer and study of the Bible. They sang about family and hope. They survived being decimated by Rome, Burnings, wholesale slaughter during the Black Plague, Spanish Inquisition, Crusades, expulsions, wholesale slaughter by Bogdan Khmelnitsky, Russian, Ukrainian and Polish pogroms. The Holocaust was the last straw for some of the remnants of the Jewish nation. For the first time in 2000 years, they took up arms and fought back. Not so much for their own survival, most didn't expect to survive, but for revenge. This CD contains their songs.