50 years since we matriculated in 1969, classmates Dimitri Coutras, Ian Stein and I met last Thursday, 7 March 2019, at Sea Point High School (Sea Point Boys’ High in our time).
We started our tour at 11:30am and met the principal, Ms L Lebreton, librarian, Sharnette Gordon and Marlene Botha
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Basie still dominates!
Straight to the principal, L Le Breton’s office.
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A walk around the quad and corridors, and outdoors
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The school hall
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The library
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Six years ago I met with Phillip Levy and Rodney Goldberg in Sydney. Here is that post:
In Australia #WeRemember by singing Zog Nit Keynmol, The Partisans’ Song.
Thanks to Phillip Masel for taking these photos at the ceremony in Mellbourne last night, and sharing them with us
Phillip, 96, was a friend of Hirsh Glik, the poet who wrote the poem in 1943.
Please Learn and Teach the Partisans’ Song to your students and children.
You have a choice of 28 languages, or even combinations, and now even in Noongar, Zulu and Xhosa
We can show you an easy and effective way to learn this before Yom Hashoah on 1 / 2 May 2019!
Learn The Partisans’ Song | tangential travel
Learn The Partisans’ Song | tangential travel
A Project For Your School Recite or sing the Partisans’ Song in your home tongue, or in a language you have learnt. Make a video, which can be as creative as you wish or just a simple recording. For the poem, each verse is made up of four lines. For the song, the last two lines in each verse are repeated. The Power Of Words The background and context The ‘Partisans’ Song’ – Zog Nit Kein Mol–written by Hirsch Glik, 22, in the Vilna Ghetto in 1943 is one of the most powerful songs of resistance and defiance ever written. While Hitler boasted that his Reich would endure for a thousand years, it is the Jewish people who resisted the forces of hatred and have endured, not the murderous Third Reich, which lasted twelve years. Today, 75 years on, long after the demise of Hitler’s murderous regime, the partisans’ song is now sung worldwide to mark the Jewish spirit of resistance. (Michael Cohen, Melbourne)
Listen to the Noongar, an Australian Aboriginal language, version.
View some of our videos of the song:
Videos | tangential travel
Videos | tangential travel
Beis Aharon School, Pinsk, Belarus
Videos of the Partisan Poem and Song Project ORT Compilation videos: Herzl Lyceum ORT, Chisinau, Moldova ORT Tallinn, Estonia Solomo Aleichemo ORT, Vilnius, Lithuania Solomo Aleichemo ORT singing the song during my visit in May 2017 ORT Chernivsti, Ukraine Kiev ORT #141, Ukraine ORT Odessa, Ukraine Moscow 1540 ORT, Russia Kazan ORT, Russia Samara ORT, Russia Mexico CIM ORT Herzlia High School, Cape Town, South Africa King David Victory Park, Johannesburg South Africa Sauleketis School, Vilnius Lithuania Dylan Kotkis of Carmel School, Perth The Poem in English The
WE ARE HERE! for Upstanders is a global program that promotes universal human rights and inclusive development. We are headquartered in Perth, Australia.
Using the stories of the Jewish Partisans, WE ARE HERE! seeks to inspire in young people the confidence and ability to stand up in the face of prejudice and oppression.
Holocaust educator and specialist Nance Adler of Seattle, Washington will visit Australia in August 2019. Nance will present to teachers, students and community leaders involved in education. We will also run workshops.
Nance’s Partisans’ Project and Lesson Plan have already been translated by our global team into Russian, Lithuanian, German, Polish and Spanish, and are available for free! https://wah.foundation/lesson/lesson-plan/
Professor Lynne Cohen, recently retired vice-chancellor of ECU – Edith Cowan University, has joined our project team. Lynne was also Head of the ECU School of Education in Western Australia
Through our network of global collaborators, there are now 27 language translations of the Partisans’ Song. The Partisans’ Song portal: https://elirab.me/znk
Recently we arranged translations into Aboriginal Noongar, Arabic and Xhosa, and soon in Zulu, Mongolian and Ladino.
The Partisans’ Song will be sung in Noongar in July at Ellenbrook Senior High School, with planned national media coverage of this World Premiere!
William Cooper
There is a strong theme connecting the Jewish Partisans and William Cooper, the Aboriginal leader who attempted to deliver his protest to the Nazi consulate in Melbourne on 6 December 1938, just after Kristallnacht. William’s petition was eventually accepted by Germany in 2017: http://www.jwire.com.au/uncle-boydie/
The Gandel Foundation, Melbourne has recently announced two scholarships in the name of William Cooper.
This powerful nine minute documentary film features Uncle Boydie, grandson of William Cooper, and Moshe Fiszman, a Holocaust survivor. https://youtu.be/1N700Olmw-U
Ties That Bind is now part of the USHMM’s – The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s (in Washington) presentation.
We are writing a lesson plan for this documentary. This will be freely available to teachers and students around the world.
Our North Queensland collaborator, Barbara Miller, has written the book: William Cooper – Gentle Warrior
We are also expanding our global online collaboration classes with World ORT and other schools. World ORT is the world’s largest Jewish education and vocational training non-governmental organisation. Several lesson plans will be offered to a global audience.
Recite or sing the Partisans’ Song in your home tongue, or in a language you have learnt. Make a video, which can be as creative as you wish or just a simple recording.
The Power Of Words
The background and context
The ‘Partisans’ Song’ – Zog Nit Keyn Mol – written by Hirsch Glik, 22, in the Vilna Ghetto in 1943, is one of the most powerful songs of resistance and defiance ever written.
Today, 75 years on, long after the demise of Hitler’s murderous regime, the partisans’ song is now sung worldwide to mark the Jewish spirit of resistance.
“Zog nit keyn mol, az du geyst dem letstn veg…….Never say that you have reached the end of the road……
Mir zaynen do! WE ARE HERE!
“This says that although it looks like the last moments of the life of the Jewish people, it is not, and where the blood was shed, will begin a new, a heroic and a wonderful Jewish life!” https://youtu.be/koA7fpGxRgw
First time translation and performance of the Partisans’ Song, Zog Nit Keynmol in Nyungar or Noongar, the language of a constellation of indigenous people living in the south-west of Western Australia.
Translation by Jesse John FLEAY – Edith Cowan University, Western Australia on 28 November 2018
Jesse John Fleay
The sound clip:
The translation:
I
Ngay ngayiny birnt
Mari warabiny maar wombar worl djidar mumbakiy
Kaya wanju wanju yakai yey
Budja daaginy Noongar yorga
II
Koorl budjara koorbon
Ngay ngayiny
Mirdap ngoop budja
Yakai kwadjet koorl
III
Ngangk djidar mumbakiy
Waam djenak dja-koorl dhabat
Koora koora nyitting
Koora koora nyitting
IV
Dudjarak ngoop
Dudjarakwombar djerta birak budja
Noongar yorga balay koordidjiny wandanginy
Dudjarak koordidjiny
V
Ngay ngayiny birnt
Mari warabiny maar wombar djidar mumbakiy
Kaya wanju wanju yakai yey
Budja daaginy Noongar yorga
Notes by the translator, Jesse John Fleay:
The universal concepts of the song tie in so well to Noongar songs of despair and war. We don’t believe in evil people, we believe in bad spirits that make people do bad things. So I adapted accordingly.
Also, nothing is ‘hidden’ in the Noongar cosmology, so for concealing, I used the smoke from a campfire, as I believed the masking of the smoke from a campfire worked rather poetically. We also don’t really have palms in the same context of a biblical perspective, so I went with desert (sand plain).
The next stage of the plan is for the choir of Ellenbrook Senior High School to learn and perform the Partisans’ Song in Noongar, under the direction of musical director, Stuart Rhine-Davis.
For more information, including all 25 language translations, visit our education portal: LEARN THE PARTISANS’ SONG
With Jewish Studies teacher, Michele Galanti and retired JS teacher Shirley Atlas
On 6 December 2018
William Cooper’s Legacy
William Cooper’s Legacy
What is that? Well, as you may know, Uncle William Cooper (1860- 1941) was an Indigenous activist and leader of his community, who also saw the injustices of the world around him, at a time when his own people were struggling for acceptance and their place in Australian society. When he heard of Kristallnacht in far off Europe, he organised for a delegation of Indigenous men and women to march to the German consulate in Melbourne, and presented them with a letter condemning the Jewish persecution. The Germans refused to accept the letter, but simply presenting it made Cooper a hero, especially in the eyes of the Jewish community.
Alon Trigger is the composer and Ron Jontof-Hutter wrote most of the text. They both studied at the Rubin Academy of Music, Jerusalem, where Maestro Asher Fisch of WASO also studied.
The aim of the project is to educate through art. In this particular piece, the heroic and unique efforts of Aboriginal leader William Cooper are highlighted through the intervention of a most unlikely man, deprived of rights himself, protesting to the the German Consul-General in Melbourne, representing one of the most advanced countries in the world. William Cooper is therefore a role model whose activism was virtually a lone voice during Germany’s break from civilization in the Nazi era.
Ron’s grandfather, Otto Jontof-Hutter, was one of those arrested during the Kristallnacht pogrom and sent to the Dachau Concentration Camp that 9 December 1938.
The story of William Cooper and Jontof-Hutter appeared in various overseas newspapers in 2015 which is the basis of the Cantata.
While the Cantata describes the metaphysical bond between those two men, despite never having met, artistic licence is kept to the minimum. People, events and text are for the large part genuine.
The Cantata is scored for a 45 piece orchestra, 10 voice choir/2 soloists and is about 37 minutes in duration.
A mini promo version of the duet between Cooper and Jontof-Hutter is available.
Kristallnacht Cantata promo Full Version
Kristallnacht Cantata promo Full Version
Kristallnacht Cantata; A Voice of Courage On November 10 the Nazi German Government ordered pogroms throughout Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland. Thousand…
There are 3 sections 1- The chaos and creativity of Weimar/Nazi Germany, leading to 2- Kristallnacht and the bond between Cooper and Jontof-Hutter. They sing a duet describing kindness and decency as human values. The last section is about a better world where tolerance and kindness transcend different cultures as common values for all. The Cantata ends with messages for hope and optimism.
The intention is to perform the Cantata in Melbourne around April 2019. There have also have been expressions of interest to have it performed in Zurich, Germany, Los Angeles and Perth.
Alfred (Uncle Boydie) Turner, Cooper’s grandson, as well as Auntie Daphne Milwark his grandniece are both supportive of this cantata.
Viv Parry – Aboriginal People and the Holocaust Programs
Australia and the Holocaust: A Koori Perspective by Gary Foley
Australia and the Holocaust: A Koori Perspective
In a way these people were perhaps unconsciously repaying the gesture of solidarity and empathy extended years before by William Cooper and his intrepid band of Koori resistance activists.
On December 6, 1938, a fierce-gazed Indigenous man from the Murray River began a march from Southampton Street Footscray to make a simple demand for justice at government offices at 419-425 Collins Street, Melbourne. But this wasn’t a protest to defend Aborigines. It was a protest to defend Jews. And it wasn’t against a state government or Federal government. It was the German Government.
The protest was led by William Cooper. And 75 years after the event, it’s now clear that it was the only one of its kind. It’s something that didn’t happen in London, or in Paris or even in New York. It happened in Melbourne, organised by people who weren’t even citizens in their own country.
On that day, towards the end of his life, William Cooper stood up for the Jews of Europe. But as you’ll learn, it was only one of many astounding acts of justice this man made, even in his last years.
Who was William Cooper?
William Cooper was an Aboriginal. An activist. A unionist. A devout, Bible-reading, church-going, hymn-singing Christian.
Through his life, he worked as a shearer, a writer, a public speaker and, by the time he died in 1941, a political leader who could successfully demand a face-to-face meeting with the Prime Minister. As a man in his 70s, he started Australia’s first indigenous justice movement – the Australian Aborigines’ League. A movement which, long after his own death, would lead to the famous 1967 referendum.
But this was no communist radical. William Cooper was a Christian who believed the best thing that had happened for Australia’s first peoples was the Christian missions. He would argue passionately, often from the Bible, that Aboriginals ought to be treated as equal citizens in this country.
Once you learn where William Cooper came from, and how he came to stand up to injustice, you’ll wonder why you hadn’t heard of him before. But to begin, take a closer look at the day he challenged the Third Reich.
The March Against Tyranny
It was with his friends from the Australian Aborigines’ League that Cooper resolved to stand up to Hitler. It followed the night of “broken glass” on 9–10 November, 1938. In that terrifying 24 hours, Adolf Hitler’s brown shirts, the Sturmabteilung, rampaged through the streets of Germany looting, burning and smashing Jewish stores, buildings and synagogues. In just a few hours, nearly 100 Jews were killed and approximately 30,000 incarcerated in concentration camps.
Across the country, Australians were stunned as they read the stories in their newspapers. But Cooper stood up, gathered his Indigenous friends and family from Fitzory and Footscray, and they walked. Mind you, one of the reasons they walked was they had no money. In fact, Cooper was raising several grandkids in his home, and they didn’t even have electricity or gas. He’d rather spend it on ink, paper and stamps for his work for the Australian Aborigines’ League.
They arrived at the imposing stone building and climbed the stairs. He demanded a meeting with Doctor Drechsler, the General Consul of the Reichs Consulat – to speak against the Nazi mistreatment of Jews that had begun on Kristallnacht a few weeks before. But when they got to the door of the Reichs Consulate, the Nazi administration wouldn’t let them in.
Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the world’s leading Holocaust research centre, says that, indeed, this protest was the only one of it’s kind in the world.
How did this happen? Why was it that – of all minority groups who could have stood up for the Jews in the 1930s – it was an Aboriginal man from one of the smallest tribes who made a stand? What drove this man, who could have been spending his twilight years fishing for Murray Cod in the Barmah Forest, to become a man who meddled in matters of state? What gave him the temerity to speak against the German Reich?
William Cooper (Aboriginal Australian) – Wikipedia
William Cooper (Aboriginal Australian) – Wikipedia
Lunchtime Lecture – The Partisan Song Project: We Are Here
The Partisans’ Song, written by Hirsh Glik, age 22, in the Vilna Ghetto in 1943, is one of the most powerful songs of resistance and defiance ever written.
The Meaning And Significance Of The Partisans’ Song
The Meaning And Significance Of The Partisans’ Song
A Video For Teachers MENU: Introduction – SABC TV Why is singing the song so Important? – Phillip Maisel Defiance Trailer – Bielski Jewish Partisans Soviet N…
A Video For Teachers MENU: The Melody – Pokrass Brothers Original Russian Soundtrack Irish Folk Band – The Rathmines Japanese Version – Isao Oiwa Kugelplex K…
Lunchtime Lecture: The Partisan Song Project – WE ARE HERE!
The Sydney Jewish Museum
Wednesday, 10 October 2018 – 1:15pm
Lunchtime Lecture – The Partisan Song Project: We Are Here
The Partisans’ Song, written by Hirsh Glik, age 22, in the Vilna Ghetto in 1943, is one of the most powerful songs of resistance and defiance ever written.
Wednesday 10 October – Sydney Jewish Museum – lunchtime
The Partisans’ Song, written by Hirsh Glik, age 22, in the Vilna Ghetto in 1943, is one of the most powerful songs of resistance and defiance ever written.
Pope honours victims of Holocaust, Soviet terror in Lithuania
Pope honours victims of Holocaust, Soviet terror in Lithuania
Pope Francis on Sunday paid homage to Holocaust victims who perished in the Vilnius ghetto, 75 years to the day after the Nazis liquidated it, and remembered those who risked and lost their lives to challenge the Soviet regime in Lithuania.
Who Are Lithuania’s Heroes Today? Å kirpa, Noreika or the Righteous Gentiles?
Who Are Lithuania’s Heroes Today? Å kirpa, Noreika or the Righteous Gentiles?
Former ghetto prisoners, members of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, members of international Jewish organizations, ambassadors from Israel and other countries
The Vilna Ghetto[a] was a World War II Jewish ghetto established and operated by Nazi Germany in the city of Vilnius in the territory of Nazi-administered Reichskommissariat Ostland.[1] During the some two years of its existence, starvation, disease, street executions, maltreatment, and deportations to concentration camps and extermination camps reduced the Ghetto’s population from an estimated 40,000 to zero. Only several hundred people managed to survive, mostly by hiding in the forests surrounding the city, joining Soviet partisans,[2][3] or sheltering with sympathetic locals.
In August of this year, an article appeared on the website of the Lithuanian municipality of Kėdainiai, under the headline: “With a minute of silence, Kėdainiai met Tel Aviv.” The text described an annual event, begun only a few years ago, commemorating the extermination of Kedainiai’s Jewish community on August 28, 1941, during the Nazi occupation of Lithuania.
At precisely 18:30, local leaders and others observed a minute of silence – while at that same moment, in Israel, descendants of that vanished Jewish community, who called their home Keidan, were doing the same thing.
Two simultaneous ceremonies – one at the hall of the association of the Vilna Jews in Tel Aviv, the other by the mass grave where more than 2,000 Keidan Jews were murdered 77 years earlier.
Such commemorations are a longstanding tradition in Israel, home to thousands of Jews who trace their families to Lithuania. But in Lithuania itself this is relatively new, and still uncommon, tradition. Kėdainiai’s annual observance began several years ago, and has grown each year. This year it was led by Saulius Grinkevičius, mayor of the municipality, and Rimantas Žirgulis, director of the regional museum. The participants included two mayor’s deputies, the heads of local cultural and educational institutions, members of the administration and museum workers, school teachers and other Kėdainiai citizens. A local television station broadcast the ceremony.
The event reflects an important recent change in public consciousness and attitude. To a significant degree, Lithuanians are confronting their country’s painful past. This is reflected in the media, in increased research into local Jewish history and culture, and in the restoration of sites related to Lithuania’s former Jewish communities. In Kėdainiai, the regional museum and its director have played an important role, as have teachers such as Laima Ardavičieneof the Kėdainiai Atžalynas gymnasium, or secondary school. As it was often in the past, Kėdainiai is providing leadership and serving as a role model for other communities in Lithuania.
Supporting those efforts going forward is a recently published English translation of the Keidan yizkor book – a volume of memoirs, historical accounts and other material gathered from survivors and descendants of the Jewish community after World War II. Originally published mostly in Hebrew and Yiddish in 1977, the book offers a multi-faceted view of Jewish life in Keidan – its history, its religious, educational, social and cultural institutions, youth organizations, portraits of its prominent people, recollections of witnesses and survivors before, during and after the Holocaust.
Cover of the Keidan Memorial (Yizkor) Book, recently translated into English. Edited by Aryeh Leonard Shcherbakov aryeh.shcherbakov@gmail.comand Andrew Cassel awcassel@gmail.com of the Keidan Associations of Israel and the U.S.; published by David Solly Sandler sedsand@iinet.net.auin Perth, Australia. The book is obtainable from any of the three above mentioned
Photos of Commemoration in Kedainiai – 28 August 2018
A section of the memorial erected in 2011 at the site of the Jews’ massacre near Kedainiai. Names of the victims were recorded as cutouts in the metal sheet.
At the site of the 28 August 1941 massacre of Kedainiai’s Jews. Mayor Saulius Grinkevičius lays flowers, while Rimantas Žirgulis (in white shirt) observes.
Local students and media participated in the commemoration.
Laima Ardavičiene, a teacher at the Kėdainiai Atžalynas gymnasium, records the event.
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