Songs of the ghettos, concentration camps, and World War II partisan outposts
Though (Khotsh)
Lyrics by: Zelik Barditshever
Composer: Zelik Barditshever
Language: Yiddish
Recorded by Ben Stonehill, Hotel Marseilles, New York, summer 1948
The song was written by Zelik Barditshever (1898–1937), an itinerant teacher, poet, and playwright from Belts, Bessarabia (present-day Bălți, Moldava). Collected by the Yiddish writer Leibu Levin, it first appeared in a volume of Barditshever’s works published in Czernowitz, Romania (now Chernivtsi, Ukraine) in 1939.
Listen to
Lyrics in English
What are you singing? What is this song called?
“Khotsh” (Though).
Very good.
Though I have no home, no land to live in,
The whole world hunts me, yet I don’t give in.
I live. Oh, I live.
A curse on my enemies—
What sense, what meaning
is there to my life,
to my endless wanderings?
Yet still I live. Oh, I live.
Though I have no feet, no hands, no part of me intact,
Yet I want to wildly dance.
I dance. Oh, I dance.
A curse on my enemies—
What sense, what meaning
is there to my life,
to my endless wanderings?
Yet still I dance. Oh, I dance.
A curse on my enemies—
What sense, what meaning
is there to my life,
to my endless wanderings?
Yet still I dance.
Though I have no voice left, no way to make a sound,
Yet I want to wildly sing.
So I sing. Oh, I sing.
A curse on my enemies—
What sense, what meaning
is there to my life,
to my endless wanderings?
Yet still I sing. Oh, I sing.
And so I live!
