4 V 1877, Kraków — 4 VI 1942, Kraków Ghetto
Mordechaj Gebirtig, a poet and author of Yiddish songs in pre- and wartime Poland, is closely identified with Kazimierz, the Jewish quarter of Cracow.
He was born in Cracow on 4 May 1877 as Markus Bertig. His education consisted of attending kheder, the basic Jewish religious school, and a public school. Subsequently, he became an apprentice to a master carpenter who taught him the trade. He worked actively to improve the living standards of workers through socialism, which is apparent in his literary works. During World War I, he served as a paramedic in a military hospital in Cracow. Thereafter, he worked in the carpentry and upholstery workshop owned by his brother Leon. He also tried his hand at acting.
As his career developed, he began to call himself Mordechaj Gebirtig, a surname which indicated that he was in the process of being “born again”, taken from the German noun Geburt, or “birth” in English. His first poem, Der Generalshtrayk (‘General Strike’), was published in 1905 in a weekly newspaper, Sotsyaldemokrat (‘Social Democrat’). A book of his poems Folkshtimlekh (‘Folk Tunes’) was published in 1920, and a book of his collected songs, Mayne lider (‘My Songs’), in 1936. His works, written in Yiddish, have been sung on the stage of many Jewish theatres in many parts of the world. Mordechaj Gebirtig wrote the iconic Holocaust song, Unzer shtetl brent (‘Our Town Is Burning’), commemorating the pogrom in Przytyk on 9 March 1936. It became the hymn of the Jewish Combat Organization and was sung in the Cracow Ghetto and other concentration camps. After the war, it became a symbolic anthem for Holocaust survivors.
During the occupation, he was first confined to Łagiewniki near Cracow and then removed to the Cracow Ghetto. He died on 4 June 1942, shot by a Gestapo officer on the way to the extermination camp. Mordechaj Gebirtig’s songs documenting pre-war Jewish life have become priceless relics of a lost world.