Ikh bin a Yid (“I Am a Jew”)

Ikh bin a Yid (“I Am a Jew”)

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Soviet Union

Yiddish poetry

Jews--Soviet Union--History

1941 poem and audio recording by Yiddish poet and Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee member Itsik Fefer. “Ikh bin a Yid” (“I Am a Jew”) affirms Jewish identity while embedding it within the Soviet anti-fascist struggle. Initially celebrated as part of the USSR’s wartime cultural mobilization, the poem later became suspect as Jewish cultural expression came under repression. Fefer’s tragic fate—arrest and execution during Stalin’s purges—marks the shifting political context of Jewish self-expression in the Soviet Union.

Itsik Fefer

Yiddish Book Center, “Night of the Murdered Poets” Resource Kit

1941

In Copyright – Educational Use Permitted (InC-EDU); see https://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/

The Black Book: The Nazi Crime Against the Jewish People

audio/mp3

Yiddish

Sound

Kalabusha, “Itzik Feffer reads his poem איך בין א ייד”, YouTube video, 6:35, August 12, 2010, https://youtu.be/t6dx9sLBt9c

Soviet Union; 1941