On the eve of the Second World War, Warsaw’s Jewish population was the largest and most socially diverse in Europe. The city had already established itself as one of the most important Jewish centres a century earlier: welfare, educational, and religious institutions had their headquarters there, as did political parties, youth movements, and sports organizations, and it was the hub for the Polish-Jewish press. Particularly after 1881, it had attracted thousands of Jewish migrants not only from within the borders of Congress Poland, but from the Russian Pale of Settlement as well.5
In 1939 its 380,000 inhabitants made up almost a third of the city total, and by the time the
3 Ruta Pups and Bernard Mark,Dos lid fun geto: zomlung (Warsaw, 1962), 46–8. 4 Ibid. 48.
5 The assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1881 was followed by anti-Jewish violence and
pogroms in Congress Poland as well as in Russia, which led to mass migrations. See Celia S. Heller, On the Edge of Destruction: Jews of Poland between the Two World Wars (New York, 1977), 38; Chone Shmeruk, ‘Aspects of the History of Warsaw as a Yiddish Literary Centre’, in Wladyslaw T. Bartoszewski and Antony Polonsky (eds),The Jews in Warsaw: A History (Oxford, 1991), 232–45 at 232; Yisrael Gutman (ed.),Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (London, 1990), 1601–3.
ghetto was established in November 1940, they numbered well over 400,000.6
Jewish Warsaw was characterized by a diversity of cultural trends. On the one hand, it housed the largest numbers of Yiddish-speakers in Europe, and was the leading centre for Yiddish literature. Despite the rising inXuence of Polish and Russian among early twentieth-century Jewish communities in Poland, Yiddish had continued to gain strength as a language of cultural and political activity, and Hebrew was also advocated by a substantial contingent as the language of the Jewish future.7At the same time, Warsaw was by far the
largest centre of Polish-speaking Jews. The process of Jewish acculturation had been more rapid here than anywhere else in Congress Poland, and although it aVected only a small minority of the population, by the nine- teenth century the city had already become famed for its plutocracy of assimilated and converted Jews. Those who had chosen to convert before the war did so in order to gain access to employment otherwise forbidden to Jews, but also to some extent because they wanted to dissociate themselves from the poor, uneducated Jewish masses. There were also those who retained their Jewish religion but insisted on speaking Polish rather than Yiddish, and advocated education for their children in Polish schools.8
The diversity of this sizeable population was manifest to an even greater extent when it was concentrated within the ghetto walls. The establishment of the ghetto also saw the growth of new inequalities. The priorities and values that had driven the pre-war community were quickly modiWed or abandoned in the new environment, where the struggle for survival took precedence. In their absence, a new elite gained control. Apart from those in top-ranking occupa- tions—members of the Judenrat and the Jewish Police, or skilled workers employed outside the ghetto—some of the most prosperous and comfortable of the ghetto’s inhabitants became those involved in illegal or criminal activities: smugglers, blackmailers, black marketeers, and other underworld Wgures. The powerful positions held by these characters aVorded them adequate food and shelter, higher wages than the majority of the ghetto inhabitants, more security from forced labour, and sometimes temporary exemption from deportation.
6 Although the outbreak of war led to a substantial emigration from the city, over 75,000 refugees
were taken in from Ło´dz´, Kalisz, and about 700 other settlements during 1940. Lucy S. Dawidowicz, The War against the Jews, 1933–1945 (London, 1975), 250.
7 Stephen D. Corrsin, ‘Aspects of Population Change and of Acculturation in Jewish Warsaw at
the End of the Nineteenth Century: The Censuses of 1882 and 1897’, in Bartoszewski and Polonsky (eds.),The Jews in Warsaw, 212–31 at 222.
8 Shmeruk, ‘Aspects’, 233; Charles G. Roland,Courage under Siege: Starvation, Disease and Death
To be sure, and as we shall see, a number of welfare institutions attempted to lessen the enormous burdens faced by the community’s weaker members in particular; nonetheless, those of limited Wnancial means in the ghetto were invariably the Wrst to suVer the eVects of victimization.9
Cultural life was deeply rooted in this diversity. The musical landscape of the Warsaw ghetto was one of impressive scope: it oVered more performances, of more varied range and subject matter, and in a greater number of locations than any of its counterparts. It boasted a symphony orchestra, several Polish and Yiddish theatres, choral groups, and cafe´s, and hosted countless concerts and informal events. Even in the months before its closure, a wide range of musical entertainments had sprung up to suit the needs of the community. But the parts of musical life with which diVerent people were likely to engage depended almost entirely on their social standing. For many, the only musical sounds in the ghetto were those of beggars singing for money on the streets, or the occasional free concerts in the soup kitchens. Others could partake of the bourgeois pleasures of symphony orchestra and chamber concerts, or attend performances at one of the ghetto theatres. Only a small upper stratum had access to the cafe´s, and to the private house concerts given by some of the ghetto’s leading artists.
This chapter considers the ways in which music as a social activity reXected the stratiWcation of the society, and the considerably varied lifestyles that people of diVerent classes were able to lead. In addition, it explores the diversity of people’s perceptions of and responses to ghetto life as expressed in the newly created songs. These engaged with some of the ghetto’s most pressing social issues, including begging, smuggling, and the allocation of welfare beneWts, and directed sharp criticism at the Judenrat and welfare institutions. In this they mirrored the preoccupations of other ghetto com- munities.10Some also took up the exhortation to document for posterity the
experiences that had befallen the community, while others were an outlet for the expression of pain, desperation, religious belief, and survival guilt.
Most musical activity in Warsaw, including the newly created songs, drew on pre-war repertoire. This was not surprising, and was also the case in most other internment centres; communities evidently found value in music that drew on their national or religious origins. In addition, the use of pre-existing melodies as a basis for new songs, which was a widespread practice in most of the ghettos, was a long-standing tradition in Yiddish folksong. Of course, the
9 Dawidowicz,The War against the Jews, 265–6.
10 See, for example, Gila Flam’s discussion of Ło´dz´ inSinging for Survival: Songs of the Lodz
process by which old songs were modiWed to the new conditions took manifold forms. Songs of hunger and oppression (an integral part of the Jewish experience prior to the Second World War) were particularly adapt- able,11 but even songs from ‘normal’ life—lullabies, love songs, and songs
about children—acquired radically altered associations and provided reveal- ing commentary about the new events. Many new songs were also composed in direct response to what was happening; at least seventeen of those written in Warsaw were preserved.12