Shray, Hertsale, Shray!

Shray, Hertsale, Shray! (Cry, My Heart, Cry!)

Lyrics: anonymous; music: based on Eduardo Bianco’s Tango Oración; arrangement: D. Zisl Slepovitch

In interwar Europe, including the Soviet Union, Latin American music enjoyed immense popularity. One of the obvious reasons for this were numerous touring groups. Within the vast body of the popular Latin American repertoire, Argentinian tango as a new and highly attractive genre played the leading role. It is no surprise that some songs of survival and resistance during and after the war adapted popular tunes to new lyrics and became widespread as new pieces. The musical origins of the so-called ‘Treblinka Song’ lie in Tango ‘Oración,’ composed by the prominent Argentinian composer and tango orchestra director Eduardo Bianco (1892–1959). While the ‘Treblinka Song’ is based on ‘Oración,’ it has its own distinct feel, tempo, and form, which is especially obvious in the introduction that rather contrasts with than resembles the energetic opening of the original.

We find this song in more than one testimony, both in the Fortunoff Video Archive and in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum collection. It was sung by Morris K. (HVT-1651), which we use as the main reference for this recording, Willy F. (HVT-2844), who presents a short fragment from the song, and Frieda Bursztyn Radasky, who sang a fuller, but also a slightly different version, under the name Treblinke dort (There Lies Treblinka). The song conveys the story of frequent deportations from Warsaw’s Umschlagplatz to Treblinka, as seen and felt by the ghetto prisoners. Despite German propaganda stating that the trains were going to the work camps, many prisoners knew the truth. Warsaw ghetto prisoners, according to Frieda Radasky’s testimony, contributed their own lines to the song, which explains why the song survived in several variants. The song spread far outside the Warsaw ghetto. Morris K., born in 1917, learned it while he was still living with his family in his hometown Połaniec, Swiętokrzyskie Voivodeship, situated more than 230 km (140 miles) south of Warsaw, before they were ordered to leave in October 1942. Frieda Radasky learned the song later, in 1943, while working in the kitchen at a coal depot in the Praga district of Warsaw, outside the ghetto. Another survivor, Willy F., born in Działoszyce in 1928, lived through the Kraków ghetto, Płaszów, Skarżysko-Kamienna, and Buchenwald concentration camps. He learned the song in the Kraków—Płaszów area, which is even farther away—300 km (186 miles) from Warsaw.