TWO STORIES
About the poem, “Afn Veg Shteyt a Boym” (The Bent Tree) by Itsik Manger (an alternate spelling for “Afn” is “Oyfn.”)
Quotes sent to the filmmaker by Itzik Manger historian, David Maisel
-“Soon after the end of World War II, we, a group of Jews who survived the Holocaust, were riding on a train from Warsaw to Lodz (Poland). It was a tense ride. Bands of Polish rednecks were still out to look for the few remaining Polish Jews and finish Hitler's work. It would sometimes happen as trains pulled into small-town stations that rednecks would board the train, pull off any Jews they could find, and shoot them. An old Polish woman sitting across from us noticed our becoming more and more nervous and pale each time we approached a station. Turning to us, she said, 'What are you afraid of? You are among people. Polish mothers are mothers, too.' Not long before she had read a Yiddish poem, “Oyfn Veg Shteyt a Boym” in the Polish translation of Anton Slonimski, and so she stressed that 'Polish mothers are mothers, too.' Hearing a friendly Polish voice in that alien railroad car, it became easier for us to breathe. We reached Lodz safely.”
Ephraim Kaganovsky, cited in the Feb. 1960 “Der Vecker” (N.Y.) original: Yiddish.
-Told to Itsik Manger by Marek Edelman, a surviving commander of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (the armed resistance by the Jews that lasted 3 weeks and kept the S.S. from continuing their evacuation of the Ghetto):
“The Warsaw Ghetto was in its death throes. In order to subdue the remaining Ghetto fighters, the Germans began throwing incendiary bombs into the buildings. The heat became unbearable. Thousands burned to death. We had little ammunition left. Only one choice- to abandon our bunkers and try to make our way, outside, to the tunnels that led to the Aryan side. Coming out of our bunker, we were stunned. The whole Ghetto was in flames. This must have been what Jerusalem looked like when the Romans destroyed it, what Rome must have looked like when Nero burned it. Then suddenly a girl in our band began to recite, or better, to mutter: “Oyfn veg shteyt a boym/ shteyt er ayngeboygn/ Ale feygl funem boym/ zenen zich tzefloygn. . .“ She barely muttered it, but we all heard it. And we felt that not only had the birds departed, but everyone- fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters...”
Manger adds: “I wrote that song in the 30's, in tribute to my mother, a simple woman who couldn't read or write but had an ocean of love, love that could become too heavy for even the strongest wings. But the song itself now belongs to that unknown girl in the Warsaw Ghetto. She hallowed it in the last seconds of her life in the glare of the Ghetto flames.”