Birds Are Drowsing

Leah Rudnitsky

ca. 1942

Birds are drowsing on the branches.
Sleep, my darling child.
At your cradle, in the field,
A stranger sits and sings.
Once you had another cradle
Woven out of joy.
And your mother, oh your mother
Will never more come by.
I saw your father fleeing
Under the rain of countless stones.
Over fields and over valleys
Flew his orphaned cry.

Translate…
Please login or register for free access to Posen Library
Register
Already have an account?
Engage with this Source
Portrait painting of a man who faces viewer and wears a suit and tie.
Tooltip info icon

Related Guide

Holocaust and Post-Holocaust Fiction and Poetry

1939–1973

Jewish literature developed individual rather than collective voices, as postwar Jewish identity was transformed by the forces of modernism and assimilation.

Restricted
Some content is unavailable to non-members, please log in or sign up for free for full access.

Related Guide

The Holocaust: Years of Catastrophe

1939–1945

Jewish writing in Nazi-occupied areas documented ghetto life, moral questions, and Jewish identity, while writers in free zones grappled with the unfolding tragedy.

Creator Bio

Leah Rudnitsky

1916–1943

Yiddish poet Leah Rudnitsky was born in Kalwarija, Lithuania, lived in Kovne (Kaunas), and settled in 1939 in Vilna, where she worked in Yiddish journalism. Ultimately confined to the Vilna ghetto, Rudnitsky wrote poems reflecting the grim circumstances of Jews living under Nazi persecution; she was also a partisan. Her most famous poem, “Dremlen feygl” (Birds Are Drowsing) commemorates the death of Jews slaughtered at Ponary forest, outside Vilna. Rudnitsky perished, possibly in the camp at Majdanek.

You may also like

Lekh-lekho

And now Blimele, dear child, Stop—stop playing now. No time for that. We can be called at any minute To leave our poor home —A lonely boat on an island of sand— And be hurled into the midst Of a…
View Source

Black Flakes

Snow has fallen, with no light. A month has gone by now or two, since autumn in its monkish cowl brought tidings my way, a leaf from Ukrainian slopes: “Remember it’s wintry here too, for the…
View Source

Census

Dense crowds proceed at dawn Through Theresienstadt’s still empty streets Five abreast curving around corners into squares. The beast checks if anybody has stumbled. Today God’s chosen people are…
View Source

I Have Never Been Here Before

I always thought I had been here before. Each year of my patched-up life I mended the fabrics of my decrepit, tattered world. In memory I recognized faces and smiles, even my father and mother…
View Source
Jewish Partisan Monumnet
Tooltip info icon

Never Say

Inspired by the Warsaw ghetto uprising, this hymn became the anthem of the Vilna partisan fighters and many other Jewish efforts to resist the Nazis.
View Source