Living as a Jew has always been challenging.
For thousands of years, the ethnoreligion has been in an almost continual state of turmoil, yet it has endured in the hearts of millions across the world.
Almost every Jewish person’s family history includes a story of survival, passed down through many generations. The creative interpretation of these tales has provided the Mlotek family with a sense of direction.
“My father was a survivor,” says Zalmen Mlotek, the Artistic Director of the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, a gentle soul. His literary work was in Yiddish. He was a Yiddish poet who lived in Shanghai during the war. My mom was a musicologist by birth in the United States. Their common bond was a love of Yiddish music.
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Yiddish song, which is more often known as Klezmer music, serves multiple functions and has a long history of passing on stories and customs. Key parts of Jewish history, these songs preserved daily life and its reality during some of the most difficult periods in recent Jewish memory, sung in Yiddish, the language primarily spoken by Jewish people in central and eastern Europe before the Holocaust. According to Mlotek, his parents put together CDs of Yiddish tunes that are “used all over the world today.”
In instance, there was an anthology that featured musical compositions made by many artists throughout WWII. “These songs express the anguish of the Second World War and the calls for resistance,” Mlotek asserts. In a new musical titled Amid Falling Walls, Mlotek is bringing the material to the stage after years of carrying on his parents’ tradition of preserving these songs. He is assisting Rabbi Avram Mlotek, his son, in his job. The Museum of Jewish Heritage is hosting the Off-Broadway production of Amid Falling Walls, which is created by National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, until December 10. The family comes back together for their chosen purpose thanks to the show, which is mostly a concert with some historical background.
For generations, Rabbi Avram has brought the stories of abandoned ghetto children to life in the performances and concerts put on by the families, drawing audiences of Holocaust survivors and their loved ones. Now these songs have profound meaning and power when played for new audiences. In addition to his religious and artistic endeavors, Rabbi Avram is a highly esteemed social activist. Following the 2016 election, he embarked on a mission to personally counteract the harmful consequences of anti-Semitism by attending anti-Semitic gatherings across the nation and engaging in outreach and personal connections.
“Every poem and every song is a form of resistance,” says Rabbi Avram. The establishment of the ghettos turned the lives of these young people upside down. How could they have known? Being well-versed in their trade, they sought solace within. That strikes me as a profound assertion of their humanity. It’s a call to action for future generations to utilize it and recognize the lasting impact of art throughout wartime.
Shmerke Kaczerginski, a member of the partisan movementa group of Jewish people who banded together in irregular military formations to oppose and sabotage the Nazi Partywas the original collector of many of the songs featured in the show. He chose to gather songs from survivors all around Europe after the war instead of immediately reconstructing his life. He viewed it as a testament and a genuine glimpse into this culture that is known via historical accounts, but not through genuine displays of feeling, as Mlotek elucidates.
The mission continued in Mlotek’s family, who worked tirelessly to compile as much of the information as they could, with the hope of sharing it with the Jewish diaspora that had been forcibly separated from their ancestry during the war. Now that the Israel-Hamas War has rocked the Jewish community, Folksbiene thinks this piece, which has been in the works for a long time, is tragically pertinent. The words “we’re again in unspeakable times” are said with reverence by Mlotek. “Every song is a reminder.”
An unnamed 21-year-old partisan poet was assassinated not long after penning the song that would become the basis for Amid Falling Walls. The song was played by several resistance battalions as a statement of unwavering presence in the face of extermination after the writer’s death, and it became an anthem for the Jewish underground.
“It was adopted as the most identifiable song of the Holocaust,” says Rabbi Avram, movingly reciting the English translation of the song’s first verse, “‘This is a song that was written with blood, not with lead, that a people amid falling walls, with grenades held in hand, that a drum beats out our message, we are here.’.” Tragically, he did not live to witness his poem and music become recognized as the national anthem of his people. However, that song remains sung. That, to me, is the magic of music: the ability to heal across generations.
With the rehearsal of these songs, NYTF is getting ready to embrace the culture of their audience once again, whether they speak Yiddish or not. Supertitles in English and Russian will be included in Amid Falling Walls. However, Mlotek claims that the actors “are so committed and passionate that often you don’t need to read a translation to get a sense of what it is about.”
The audience is engrossed in a multimedia production that blends live orchestra and performers with recorded sound and visuals, as the musical performance is accompanied with photos of Jewish life that the family has selected from collections worldwide.
“In diving into a unique experience, we’re tapping into a rather universal emotion,” Avram points out. With the global refugee crisis in the spotlight and the heartbreak of losing a kid at the forefront of everyone’s minds, these are the kinds of feelings that don’t need literal interpretation…Despite the fact that we are experiencing a somber period in history, both onstage and off, this is a cheerful and victorious production that proclaims the persevering influence of art during unfathomable hardship. There is genuine optimism.
Visit www.folksbiene.org for more information about Amid Falling Walls.
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