Mick Hartley

The lost world of Jewish Poland, before the Holocaust. Polish singer Olga Mieleszcsuk, with Polish Jewish composer Zygmunt Białostocki’s most famous song.

Read about her here (from 2018).

Raised as a devout Catholic, Olga set out on a journey of Jewish transformation during an interfaith visit to Auschwitz, a five-day retreat where she and other Poles met American and Israeli Jews as well as some German grandchildren of Nazi officers.

“When I started to sing in Yiddish, I had no idea about Jewish culture at all,” she said, recalling the emotional visit. “This world suddenly opened up to me in Auschwitz. I was there for five days doing meditation and tikkun olam [repairing the world]. A Hasidic rabbi sang in Hebrew and Yiddish, and I felt deeply connected with the place.”

Olga enrolled in a course on Yiddish music organized by Warsaw’s Shalom Foundation, eventually deciding it would be her mission to bring Yiddish back to the Jewish people — especially young Ashkenazim unfamiliar with the mamaloshen, or mother tongue, of their ancestors.

Six years ago, Olga underwent an Orthodox conversion to Judaism and moved to Jerusalem.

Yiddish tango? Oh yes. Despite the glamour of modern tango, there was always something mournful about it. Legendary Argentinian singer Carlos Gardel set the pattern in 1917 with his Mi Noche Triste, forever associating tango with the feeling of tragic love. It swiftly caught on in the gloomier parts of Eastern Europe – and particularly with Jews.

“In the 1930s, Warsaw was the capital of European tango, and most of the songwriters and composers of tango were Jewish,” Olga said in an interview at a Tel Aviv cafe. “Jews continued to write tango during the Holocaust. It helped them express their sorrow.”

The genre was kept alive by Polish Jews who immigrated to Palestine during and after the war, writing Hebrew lyrics to their original pieces.

“Here, they composed love tangos, not for women but for the land — even before Israel was established,” Olga said. “In the Warsaw Ghetto, there were lots of famous cafes where people used to perform. Some poets were writing cabaret and tango pieces. In the concentration camps, there was also the story of the Gold brothers, who had their own orchestra. One ran away to the East and arrived to Palestine. The other didn’t survive.”

But modern forward-looking Israel hasn’t shown much interest:

In perhaps a sad irony, Poland’s most famous Yiddish tango singer no longer performs Jewish music in Israel — mainly because so few Israelis are interested.

“My mission to spread Yiddish around Israel failed completely,” Olga said. “For most Israelis, Yiddish music is connected to the Shoah and with the haredi Orthodox world.”

Even her own husband, Shlomi, who is of Kurdish descent, can’t stand Yiddish, she said, noting that many Sephardim, or Jews of North African and Middle Eastern descent, associate Yiddish with European shtetl dwellers.

“For Sephardim, Yiddish is the essence of the Diaspora,” she said laughing. “It’s like an illness.”

On the other hand, Olga said, Americans Jews appreciate klezmer even if they can’t always follow the lyrics.

“When I was in America, I felt like a star,” she said.

Here’s another of hers – “One of the most popular Polish tangos in late 30s. It was written by Władysław Lidauer, who died in the Warsaw ghetto.”