We offer our readers the “Song of Hate”, that Itzik Manger dedicated to the martyred Shmuel (Artur) Zygielbojm, the representative of the “Bund” underground in the Polish government in exile in London. The letter is dated the 8^th of December 1942, about half a year before Zygielbojm took his own life in protest against the silence of the free world in light of the annihilation of the Jewish people by the Germans in Poland and in eastern Europe.

This poem, accompanied by a copy of Itzik Manger's letter to Zygielbojm, as well as an English rendering of the poem by Mayus Novogrudsky, the New York correspondent of “Lebns-Fragn”, who sent it to us for the “Fraye Lebns-Fragn”. Majus himself found this document of historical importance in the Yivo Archive in New York.

The original version of the poem and of Manger’s dramatically written letter to Zygielbojm are kept in the Zygielbojm papers file at the Yivo Archive.

I.L.

Manger"s Letter

Dear Zygielbojm,

I am sending you my Song of Hate. It is dedicated to you. At first I was, myself, frightened by the feeling, but it entered my blood. I know I will not tremble when the Song of Hate will come to pass, and, even more, I will not regret it. If the song were to inspire deeds that would bring closer the day of judgment, I would be the happiest man in the world.

Yours,

Itzik Manger

12/8/1942

My Song of Hate

by Itzik Manger

Dedicated to Artur Zigielbojm, The Pleader of our Grief and our Rage

Is it my destiny to be the final singer
Of slaughtered multitudes untold?
Through cemetery grass that’s overgrown I trail my fingers -
A broken tombstone of an ancient, sick and old…

It is my cursed luck that sent the coming spring
The Prayer of the Dead from my lips to hear,
And sent the birds with their tring-a-ling,
To sip from my overflowing cup of tears.

Were I to become a willow, weeping,
I would by “their” children’s cradles stand along,
And throw my shadow into their dreams, where they are sleeping,
And poison their beings with my song:

Your father is an axe, your mother is a knife,
And from your parents their life blood drains -
Your children will not grow to mature life,
While I will count their every moment wane.

Your father is an axe, your mother is a knife,
And from your parents their tears trickle, like my own,
Your children will not grow to a mature life,
Because their every breath I will choke down.

Grant me, O God, a thousand dreams of ghouls,
So I could their bodies in my dreams devour,
Their blond faces and their blue-eyed fools,
Unfurl their desperate and cursed hours.

Deploy, O God, your owls across the dark dominion,
Over dying cities, towns, and castles drained of life,
Where my hate is dancing with a happy minion,
And dogs lick the German blood off their knives…

(Translated by Majus Nowogrόdzky, N.Y 2015)