Lost Holocaust music, nearly erased by Stalin, goes on tour in Asia

A collection of 263 Yiddish songs, gathered by Soviet Jewish ethnomusicologist Moisei Beregovsky from Holocaust survivors in Ukraine in 1944, has been brought to light after nearly being lost due to Joseph Stalin's crackdown on Jewish culture. Beregovsky was arrested in 1950, and his collection was confiscated, only to be rediscovered in the 1990s in Kyiv.

“One of the biggest traumas that people had in the Bershad ghetto was that no one would notice the death,”

Anna Shternshis, a professor at the University of Toronto, compiled 15 of these songs into the album "Yiddish Glory: The Silenced Songs of World War II," released in April. Shternshis, along with singer-songwriter Pavel Lion (Psoy Korolenko), toured Asia in May, performing concerts in Seoul, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Beijing. The album focuses on the experiences of Jews in Ukrainian ghettos and concentration camps, with Shternshis noting that some songs, like "Dear Mama," represent a "fantasy" of a dignified death rather than historical accuracy, reflecting the trauma of the time. Shternshis hopes to eventually perform this music in Ukraine once the current conflict ends.