by lawrencebush on March 12, 2010
On this date in 1421, 212 surviving Viennese Jews were burned to death after a year of persecution, forced conversion, expulsion, imprisonment in their synagogue, and mass suicide. Contemporary reports described the Jews as singing songs and dancing before the pyres. Archduke Albrecht V’s Wiener Geserah (Vienna Edict), which prompted these horrors, occurred amid the fervor of the Hussite Crusades, mounted by the Catholic Church to suppress reformist uprisings in Bohemia; Albrecht’s persecutions helped to fund his military campaign. All relics of Jewish life in Austria were destroyed, and Jewish families did not return until the 16th century. Also on this date, in 1938, Austria was annexed to the Nazi Third Reich as the German army poured across the border. No shots were fired. In Vienna, 200,000 Austrians gathered to cheer Hitler. “I have in the course of my political struggle,” he later said, “won much love from my people, but when I crossed the former frontier, there met me such a stream of love as I have never experienced.”
“If I speak of Vienna it must be in the past tense, as a man speaks of a woman he has loved and who is dead.”—Erich von Stroheim
by lawrencebush on March 10, 2010
The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire took the lives of at least 146 workers, mostly Jewish and Italian immigrant women and girls (as well as thirty men), on this date in 1911. Many of the trapped workers were forced to leap from the upper floors of the burning building, which fire truck ladders could not reach; other escape routes had been blocked by the fire or were simply locked by factory management to keep workers from taking breaks during their shifts. (A list of the victims can be read at http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/victims.html.) The Triangle Fire followed a year-long strike, the “Uprising of the 20,000,” which established the clout of the new International Ladies Garment Workers Union but failed to bring a contract to the Triangle factory, one of the largest sweatshops in New York. The company owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, were acquitted of criminal charges but were made to pay civil damages of about $75 per victim, while receiving insurance payments equivalent to about $400 per victim. A New York State Factory Investigating Commission held statewide hearings over the course of the next five years, which prompted the passage of significant worker safety legislation.
“This is not the first time girls have been burned alive in the city. Every week I must learn of the untimely death of one of my sister workers. Every year thousands of us are maimed. The life of men and women is so cheap and property is so sacred.”
—Rose Schneiderman, ILGWU organizer
by lawrencebush on March 10, 2010
Lillian Wald co-founded what would become the Henry Street Settlement House on this day in 1893 — her 26th birthday. Wald was the greatest champion of public health services in New York City and helped to found the National Organization for Public Health Nursing and Columbia University’s School of Nursing, as well as the National Women’s Trade Union League and the National Child Labor Committee. She ran Henry Street until 1930 and lived among the people she served on the Lower East Side. In 1909 she hosted the National Negro Conference, which led to the creation of the NAACP. Wald was an ardent feminist, pacifist and peace activist and was listed as an “undesirable citizen” by the U.S. Military Intelligence Bureau during World War I. Nevertheless, she continued to lead as an institution-builder on a great variety of issues, helping to form the Women’s Peace Party (which became the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom), the American League to Abolish Capital Punishment, the ACLU, anti-Ku Klux Klan and anti-imperialist groups, and much more. She never had a long-term partner but was deeply imbedded in communities of women — the “model of a Victorian-era lesbian,” according to Caryn E. Neumann (in glbtq, an on-line encyclopedia of GLBT culture).
“The whole world is my neighborhood.” — Lillian Wald
by Rachael Kafrissen on March 9, 2010
The Yiddish Song of the Week is a project of the An-Sky Folklore Research Project. The An-Sky Institute is a project of the fabulous Center for Traditional Music and Dance. Sh. An-Sky was a Russian Jewish ethnographer, playwright, kultur arbeter and key figure in modern Yiddish culture.
Itzik Gottesman is the director of the An-Sky Folklore Research Project. Here’s the mission of the Yiddish Song of the Week:
This initiative is part of a larger effort by the AJFRP to revitalize traditional Yiddish folksinging performance and research on the subject. To that end, this website will emphasize field recordings of traditional Yiddish folksingers from around the world contributed by folklorists, ethnomusicologists, musicians, singers and collectors.
Each Yiddish song will be presented with Yiddish words and translation, along with commentary from the contributor. Since the website is a blog, we hope that each song contribution will elicit comments from others on the song itself, or on the singing style of the singer. Perhaps others will contribute a variant of the song from their recordings, etc.
How cool is that? The first two songs featured are performances by Itzik’s grandmother, Lifshe Schaechter-Widman. The audio player is right there on the web page. You can read the fascinating story of the songs and listen at the same time. Check it out!
