"Papirosn" (, ) is a
Yiddish
Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ver ...
song that was written in the 1920s.
The song tells the story of a
Jew
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""Th ...
ish boy who sells cigarettes to survive on the streets. He depicts his tragic fate; having lost his parents, his younger sister has died on the bench,
and eventually he loses his own hope.
The song's author
Herman Yablokoff
Herman Yablokoff (August 11, 1903 – April 3, 1981, yi, הערמאַן יאַבלאָקאָף, russian: link=no, Герман Яблоков, born Chaim Yablonik, Хаим Яблоник), sometimes written Herman Yablokov, Herman Yablokow, ...
was a member of the Yiddish theater that was active in Lithuania and Poland in the years following
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
. He was inspired by children who tried to make a living selling cigarettes in the streets.
The sight of the children reminded him of his childhood in World War I in
Grodno
Grodno (russian: Гродно, pl, Grodno; lt, Gardinas) or Hrodna ( be, Гродна ), is a city in western Belarus. The city is located on the Neman River, 300 km (186 mi) from Minsk, about 15 km (9 mi) from the Polish b ...
, where he tried selling cigarettes to passers-by.
Yablokoff went to the United States in 1924; the song was published in an American radio program in Yiddish in 1932 and became a hit as part of a musical of the same name that premiered in 1935. Many music sheets of the song were sold. A silent movie in which
Sidney Lumet
Sidney Arthur Lumet ( ; June 25, 1924 – April 9, 2011) was an American film director. He was nominated five times for the Academy Award: four for Best Director for ''12 Angry Men'' (1957), ''Dog Day Afternoon'' (1975), ''Network'' (1976), ...
played the Jewish boy was made.
"Papirosn" was later amended to mirror the tribulations of
the Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
in the ghettos of Poland and Lithuania.
The song was used as a base for many Holocaust songs in the
Lodz and
Vilna
Vilnius ( , ; see also other names) is the capital and largest city of Lithuania, with a population of 592,389 (according to the state register) or 625,107 (according to the municipality of Vilnius). The population of Vilnius's functional u ...
Ghettos, among others.
Shmerke Kaczerginski
Shmaryahu "Shmerke" Kaczerginski ( yi, שמערקע קאַטשערגינסקי; October 28 1908 – April 23 1954) was a Yiddish-speaking poet, musician, writer and cultural activist. Born to a poor family in Vilna and orphaned at a young age, Kac ...
found two alternate versions of the song, both of which share the tune of the original but have different stories:
One version was written by
Yankele Hershkowitz, a famous street singer from the Lodz Ghetto; it follows the story of the original song but tells a story about ration coupons in the Ghetto.
The other version, written by Jewish poet
Rikle Glezer, describes the
Ponary massacre
, location = Paneriai (Ponary), Vilnius (Wilno), Reichskommissariat Ostland
, coordinates =
, date = July 1941 – August 1944
, incident_type = Shootings by automatic and semi-automatic weapons,
genocide
, perpetrators ...
. An additional version from the
Warsaw Ghetto
The Warsaw Ghetto (german: Warschauer Ghetto, officially , "Jewish Residential District in Warsaw"; pl, getto warszawskie) was the largest of the Nazi ghettos during World War II and the Holocaust. It was established in November 1940 by the G ...
makes a direct allusion to the original but the boy sells ghetto
black bread
Rye bread is a type of bread made with various proportions of flour from rye grain. It can be light or dark in color, depending on the type of flour used and the addition of coloring agents, and is typically denser than bread made from whea ...
instead of cigarettes.
There have been other versions of the song, including non-Yiddish versions.
The song was not officially prohibited in the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
but it was usually played at private events—it was seldom allowed to be played in public because it was argued that the lyrics were not about
Soviet Jews
The history of the Jews in the Soviet Union is inextricably linked to much earlier expansionist policies of the Russian Empire conquering and ruling the eastern half of the European continent already before the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. "For ...
.
The melody of the song was first documented as an “unnamed melody” recorded in 1929 by Russian ethnomusicologist
Moisei Beregovsky
Moisei Iakovlevich Beregovsky (russian: Моисей Яковлевич Береговский, yi, משה אהרן בערעגאָווסקי; 1892–1961) was a Soviet Jewish folklorist and ethnomusicologist from Ukraine, who published mainly in ...
(track 25 of
Historical Collection of Jewish Musical Folklore 1912-1947 Vol 6). It was also published in 1920 by Abe Schwartz as “Freilach #317”. It is nearly identical to the Bulgarian folksong Аз съм Гошо Хубавеца ("I am Gosho, the handsome one").
"In his book _Bulgarski gradski pesni_ (_Bulgarian Urban Songs_,
Sofia, 1968), the noted Bulgarian folklorist Professor Nikolai Kaufman
includes a song called 'Az sum Gosho khubavetsa' ('I am Gosho, the
Handsome One').... e melody of the Bulgarian song is nearly identical
to that of 'Papirosn.' Although Professor Kaufman recorded the song from
an informant in 1965, he indicates that it goes back to about 1918. In
the introduction to his book Professor Kaufman cites the song as an
example of songs song to Romanian urban melodies and popularized in
Bulgaria by the circus _kupletist_ inger of (usually satirical) cabaret
songsDzhib, whose real name was Iakob Goldshtain.
"In response to a letter from me asking him about the Bulgarian
song, Prof. Kaufman writes that his informants mention 1922 or 1925 as
the time when Dzhib popularized 'Az sum Gosho khubavetsa.' They all
agree, however, that by 1932 (when Yablokoff started singing 'Papirosn'
on the radio in New York) the song had been displaced in Bulgaria by new
songs. (Prof. Kaufman adds that the melody is still used as a folkdance
tune in northern Bulgaria, where it is considered to be a Bulgarian folk-
song.)"
References
{{reflist, 30em
Yiddish-language songs
1920s songs