About Holocaust ((full)): Song

With a melody borrowed from a pre-war Soviet march, the song became an anthem of the Jewish partisans hiding in the forests of Eastern Europe. Its famous refrain, “Mir zaynen do!” (We are here!), was a radical statement. In a system designed to erase Jewish existence, singing that phrase was an act of spiritual resistance. After the war, survivors carried Zog Nit Keynmol to Israel, where it was adapted into the unofficial anthem Ani Ma’amin (I Believe).

Perhaps the most famous song to emerge from the Holocaust is not a post-war reflection but a wartime anthem of defiance. In 1943, while imprisoned in the Vilna Ghetto, a 23-year-old poet named Hirsh Glick heard news of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Despite knowing the Nazis would crush the rebellion, Glick wrote the Yiddish lyrics to Zog Nit Keynmol (Never Say). song about holocaust