Lin Jaldati - Jiddische Lieder (Amiga, 1982)

...another album produced by Charly Ocasek.

Lin Jaldati was sent to concentration camps when the Nazis occupied Holland. She didn't speak Yiddish, but learned Yiddish songs from her fellow prisoners. Jaldati survived Auschwitz; being a communist, she came to East Germany to help establish a socialist German state. She married Eberhard Rebling, a German Gentile communist who later became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, and started to perform Yiddish songs for a German audience with Rebling accompanying her on piano. Later they were joined by their daughters Katinka and Jalda. Lin Jaldati dedicated her art and her life to communist East Germany. This didn't prevent her from being banned from performing in the late sixties; the hysteria had gone so far that even performing Yiddish songs was interpreted as a pro-Israel statement. For a long time Lin Jaldati, who was highly accepted by what later became the East German Yiddish and klezmer scene, was the only Yiddish performer in East Germany.

 

In the GDR there was no connection to the world centers of Yiddish culture. Israel was seen as an aggressor and song collections, for example from New York, were exchanged among friends but could not be found in any libraries. There were a few recordings by the Leipziger Synagogue choir, mainly religious songs, symphonically arranged. And the well known singer Lin Jaldati: she had survived Auschwitz. Occasionally, official politics made use of her good name. In 1966, she was allowed to release her interpretations of Yiddish resistance and folk songs on one side of a record, and in 1982 an entire record was released. This album, "Jiddische Lieder", with orchestra conducted by Martin Hoffmann, catches her in the last decade of her career. She can be heard intoning, speaking, shouting, and occasionally approximating notes amid the mostly world-weary singing.

Tracklist:

1. As der Rebe Elimelech
2. Dem Milners Trern
3. Nisim fun Rabejim
4. Hungerik Dajn Ketsele
5. Rabojsaj
6. Schwartse Karschelech
7. In Kamf
8. Jome, Jome
9. Schustersche Wajbelech
10. Ojfn Bojdem
11. Tsip Tsapekl
12. A Semerl
13. Dort bajm Breg fun Weldl
14. S' brent

Lin Jaldati - Jiddische Lieder (Amiga, 1982)

(192 kbps)